microSD Express Doubles Speeds, New SD Express Speed Classes Introduced

[btarunr]

SD Association (SDA) today announced the latest evolution of SD Express memory cards doubling microSD Express memory card speed up to 2 GB/s, plus four new SD Express Speed Classes to ensure guaranteed minimum sequential performance levels in the new SD 9.1 specification including support of Multi-stream access and related Power and Thermal Management assuring the guaranteed performance. SD 9.1 helps consumers identify the right card for their device while giving manufacturers new tools to assure minimum level of performance of SD Express memory cards and have means to guide consumers what type of cards will assure specific application operations.

The latest generation of microSD Express uses the PCIe interface delivering a 1,969 megabytes per second (MB/s), nearly 2 gigabytes per second (GB/s) speeds by using the PCIe Gen 4 x1 lane as defined in the latest update to the microSD Addendum version 8 specification. microSD Express was introduced with 985 MB/s speed maximum data transfer rate and the NVMe upper layer protocol in the SD 7.1 specification. The increase in speed gives product designers more storage options and SSD level performance for a variety of size constrained devices requiring easily repairable or upgradeable storage.



The SD Express Speed Classes are used exclusively on SDXC, SDUC, microSDXC and microSDUC memory cards offering the SD Express bus. Changes in memory technology necessitate the need to define speeds as NAND flash technology continues to evolve. SD Express is the most significant evolution for SD since it was introduced in 2000. It meets new and evolving market needs to support increased performance requirements of controllers, memories, and other application interfaces. SD Express can fully support almost every use case demanding higher speed removable or semi-removable memory cards and is ideal for meeting the growing number of Right to Repair laws.

"By defining minimum assured sequential performance standards for SD Express memory cards, the SDA helps both device manufacturers and consumers ensure the best recording and playback of all types of content," said Hiroyuki Sakamoto, SDA president. "We doubled the speed of microSD Express to 2 GB/s to give product manufacturers more storage options capable of handling the most demanding storage uses making SD Express memory cards a compelling, ecologically sound choice making it easier to repair and upgrade devices."



New Features
In order to optimize the SD Express speed class usage under various power levels and thermal conditions - Leveraging NVMe specifications, SD Express memory card now offer several Power Management settings through Maximum Power (MP) values. The card consumes power up to one of the MP values set by the host device to manage card temperatures. SD Express memory cards use a new Thermal Management feature where the card indicates a group of its specific thermal thresholds. The host device may then set appropriate Thermal Management parameters for the card according to the target class and the selected PCIe bus mode, much like an MP value for power management.

The SD 9.1 specification defines the access rules required to ensure the minimum defined performance of the PCI/NVMe interface in SD Express cards, including multi-stream access of up to eight streams.

The SDA has prepared a whitepaper providing more details about the new features and SD Express Speed Classes defined by SD 9.1.

SD Express
A growing list of devices and memory cards support SD Express. SD Express offers SSD performance levels with transfer speeds up to ~4 GB/sec thanks to the PCI Express (PCIe) and NVMe Express (NVMe) architectures. The first SD Express cards were introduced with SD7.0 specifications for the full-size SD form factor supporting PCIe Gen 3 x1 interface with speeds of 985 MB/s. SD8.0 defines three additional PCIe interfaces - PCIe Gen 4 x1, PCIe G3 x2 and PCIe Gen 4 x2 quadrupling speeds to 4 GB/s. SD7.1 specification added SD Express 985 MB/s to the microSD form factor and the microSD Addendum version 8 specification doubled speeds to 2 GB/s by using PCIe Gen 4 x1. SD Express gigabyte transfer speeds bring new storage opportunities for devices with demanding performance levels capable of moving large amounts of data generated by data-intense wireless or wired communication, super-slow motion video, RAW continuous burst mode and 8K video capture and playback, 360 degree cameras/videos, speed hungry applications running on cards and mobile computing devices, ever evolving gaming systems, multi-channel IoT devices and automotive to name a few.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Arco]

An even lower getting lost somewhere time. Now with You Will Never Find It 2.0™

 

[qlum]

Meanwhile smartphone makers have been slowly removing microsd support more and more in favor of hefty upcharges for more storage.

 

[Chaitanya]

Another DoA format? SD express was announced long time back with 0 adoption from industry.

 

[Tomorrow]

Meanwhile smartphone makers have been slowly removing microsd support more and more in favor of hefty upcharges for more storage.

This

Another DoA format? SD express was announced long time back with 0 adoption from industry.

And this.

Most cards are still UHS-I. Even UHS-II is a rarity among MicroSDXC cards. Support from Smartphone manufactures is also nonexistent.

 

[persondb]

I wonder why they didn't adopt x2 lanes like for the normal-sized SD cards? In fact, I barely even see proper normal-sized SD cards, it's really just microSD put in an adapter as that's waaaay more common.

Though I guess they first need to actually create products that use SDExpress, which doesn't seem to be going well. I thought by now there would be, since I think the first demoes were in 2019? It's taking so long that it feels even more dead than UHS-II and UHS-III which while rare, there are some actual products.

 

[Chaitanya]

This

And this.

Most cards are still UHS-I. Even UHS-II is a rarity among MicroSDXC cards. Support from Smartphone manufactures is also nonexistent.

Not just for smartphone but drones, action cams, tablets, etc... none support UHS-II microSD format(while there are couple of UHS-II cards on market already) and of those Action cams and drones these days shoot 4k and beyond for video so its quite puzzling as to why this inertia from industry.

 

[Arpeegee]

At this rate people will start using NVMe 2230 drives for their smart devices and manufacturers can avoid the licensing fees.

I use to have hope that these would be adopted but now I feel the speeds are too slow to compete with anything today or the future.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Why is the microSD Express standard so much faster than the SD Express standard? 2GB's vs 0.6GB's. SD Express is only 2x as fast as SD UHS-II, still making it far slower than CF Express. The microSD Express though are faster than the newest CF-E type A standard. What is going on?

 

[watzupken]

I feel micro SD card speed have pretty much stagnated. Furthermore, even if you can find a fast card, the card reader in most devices don't support high speed transfers. The other thing is cost and is very obvious moving from UHS 1 to 2 standards, the price of the cards increases significantly. My preference if a device needs fast storage, is to adopt the PCIE/NVME standard, using a 2230 SSD instead that is fast and alot cheaper. Of course, this will increase the price of the device itself, but its better than buying a lot of SD cards that cost a lot, with questionable longevity.

 

[LabRat 891]

PCIe all the things! - hackers/makers, rejoice!