This week, the SD Association announced a brand new standard for SD cards called SD Express, which holds the promise of up to 128TB SD cards and data transfer rates of 985MB/s.

We've learned over the years to take the claims of what a new SD card standard can do with a grain of salt. For example, the SDXC standard is meant to offer us 2TB cards, but the largest you can buy right now is 512GB. SD Express forms part of the new SD 7.0 specification and achieves such high speeds through embracing PCI Express 3.0 and NVMe 1.3 interfaces.

What's most impressive about SD Express is the fact it remains backwards compatible with existing SD interfaces. Insert it into a legacy slot and you'll get very slow access to terabytes of storage, but it will work!

Speaking about the new standard, Hiroyuki Sakamoto, president of the SD Association said, "With SD Express we're offering an entirely new level of memory card with faster protocols turning cards into a removable SSD ... SD 7.0 delivers revolutionary innovations to anticipate the needs of forthcoming devices and content rich and speed hungry applications."

If SD Express delivers on its promises, it could be quite revolutionary for the gadgets we use every day. If you had a card that transfers data at 985MB/s while offering terabytes of storage, why would you need an internal SSD in a laptop or hard drive in a games console? Digital cameras, smartphones, and 4K/8K video recording equipment would also benefit greatly.

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