microSD Express Implements NVMe to Become the Fastest Mobile Removable Media

[btarunr]

The SD Association announced today microSD Express, offering the popular PCI Express and NVMe interfaces alongside the legacy microSD interface for backwards compatibility. Like SD Express, microSD Express uses the PCIe interface delivering a 985 megabytes per second (MB/s) maximum data transfer rate and the NVMe upper layer protocol enables advanced memory access mechanism, enabling a new world of opportunities for mobile devices.

microSD Express cards defined in the SD 7.1 specification will be offered in a variety of capacities such as microSDHC Express, microSDXC Express and microSDUC Express. "microSD Express gives the mobile industry a compelling new choice to equip mobile devices with removable SSDs," said Hiroyuki Sakamoto, SDA president. "SD 7.1 prepares consumers and mobile device manufacturers to meet ever increasing storage demands for years to come."



"PCI-SIG is pleased to continue our collaboration with the SDA on this newest innovation for the world's leading removable memory card - microSD," said Al Yanes, PCI-SIG president and chairman. "PCIe specification conformance tests are available today by major test vendors, offering a significant advantage for any new PCIe adopter."

microSD Express delivers speeds necessary to transfer large amounts of information generated by data-intense wireless communication, speed hungry applications running on cards and mobile computing devices, ever evolving gaming systems, multi-channel IoT devices, numerous automotive uses, higher resolution mobile videos, action cameras, 360o videos, VR and more.

"NVMe is the industry-recognized performance SSD interface from the client to the data center to mobile, shipping in millions of units," said Amber Huffman, NVM Express Inc. president. "By SDA adopting NVMe technology into the new microSD Express cards, users can experience lower latency and increasingly fast transfer speeds across various applications."

microSD Express uses the well-known PCIe 3.1 and NVMe v1.3 specifications defined by PCI-SIG and NVM Express, respectively, on the second row of pins. PCIe 3.1 includes the low power sub-states (L1.1, L1.2) enabling low power implementations of SD Express for the mobile market. In addition, SD Express cards with significantly higher speed data transfer rates are expected to consume less energy than traditional microSD memory cards while keeping the same maximum consumed power. The cards provide system developers new options offered by PCIe and NVMe capabilities, such as Bus Mastering, Multi Queue (without locking mechanism) and Host Memory Buffer. By relying on successful protocols already in the marketplace, the SDA gives the industry an advantage allowing utilization of existing test equipment and saving in development process by usage of existing building blocks used in existing designs.

The SDA released visual marks to denote microSD Express memory cards to make matching the card and device easier for optimal device performance.

For more information, access the whitepaper (PDF) here.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Prima.Vera]

Amazing.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Now we're talking. This should in theory lead to not only faster, but more reliable memory cards. That's unless they go all QLC over night...
Oh and there's that small issue of hardware support, which will most likely take a couple of years at least, since a lot of the mobile devices only have one PCIe lane, which is for Wi-Fi.

 

[ExV6k]

Now we're talking. This should in theory lead to not only faster, but more reliable memory cards. That's unless they go all QLC over night...
Oh and there's that small issue of hardware support, which will most likely take a couple of years at least, since a lot of the mobile devices only have one PCIe lane, which is for Wi-Fi.

I didn't know PCIe was present on mobile devices (we're talking about smartphones/ARM platforms, right?), I read somewhere that it was a very power-hungry bus. Very interesting to say the least!

 

[Caring1]

Soon to be the smallest, most expensive thing you have ever misplaced.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I didn't know PCIe was present on mobile devices (we're talking about smartphones/ARM platforms, right?), I read somewhere that it was a very power-hungry bus. Very interesting to say the least!

It's been used in high-end mobile SoCs for a few generations now. Qualcomm seemingly put it in the Snapdragon 810 and all the 800-series chips since then has used it. 802.11ac and even more so 802.11ax requires PCIe, as SDIO isn't fast enough and USB 3.x is apparently not suitable for it in phones for some reason. It's also worth noting that UFS flash (the replacement for eMMC) is using a PCIe interface, which is technically what SD Express is based off. As such, a PCIe interface was needed and it seems like it ended up being used for other things. However, there are no spare lanes for SD Express in these chips. It's possible that the 855 has it, but I'd guess it'll be something we'll only see in the 865 or even 875, or whatever Qualcomm might call their new chips.

Soon to be the smallest, most expensive thing you have ever misplaced.

I don't know what you do with yours, but I tend to put my microSD cards in my phone and leave them there, for the simple reason that they're so easy to misplace.

 

[Xajel]

Now we're talking. This should in theory lead to not only faster, but more reliable memory cards. That's unless they go all QLC over night...
Oh and there's that small issue of hardware support, which will most likely take a couple of years at least, since a lot of the mobile devices only have one PCIe lane, which is for Wi-Fi.

High-end SoC will add more PCIe for sure with time as new technologies comes, but you already need a new phone to support this, so it must come with a new SoC already. But as you said, these will require 1-2 years to be there.

 

[TheLostSwede]

High-end SoC will add more PCIe for sure with time as new technologies comes, but you already need a new phone to support this, so it must come with a new SoC already. But as you said, these will require 1-2 years to be there.

Well, you don't "need" a new phone, the cards are still backwards compatible with microSD, it's just that you won't see any of the performance benefits...