MicroSD Express standard with improved speed announced at MWC 2019

MicroSD cards have been proving how useful they can be since they were launched in 2005. Ever since they have been introduced,  they are being used for storing photos, videos, audio and adding more storage to electronic devices. In general, the microSD card is used to further increase the limit to which the device (smartphones, cameras, recorders) can store data.

And now, microSD cards are about to be upgraded as they will now have a faster speed in data transfer. The SD Association has introduced microSD Express cards, which are the next generation of memory cards. These newly launched cards were unveiled at MWC 2019 and they rely on NVMe and PCIe technologies for SSDs which gives an incredibly fast read and write speed. With these new microSD cards, the Association has promised a data transfer speed of up to 985MBps which gives them more speed than the previous generation cards.

The SD Association first announced the Express standard for SD cards back in 2018. They had also revealed that the new generation of SD Express cards will have up to 128TB in storage. The three new variants of the new microSD cards are named — microSDHC Express, micro SDXC Express and microSDUC Express. These new Express microSD cards will come in varying storage options and they will follow SD 7.1 specifications.

These newly launched microSD Express cards has a second row of pins which are used for the PCIe 3.1 and NVMe 1.3 technology. Earlier there used to be only one row of pins which housed all the data and technology. These SD cards are ideal for high-intensity tasks like recording 4K videos, slow motion video recording, RAW burst mode output, 8K video playback etc. Other than offering huge expansion of storage, these microSD Express cards also consume less energy than their predecessors.

For developers, the microSD Express cards offer Bus mastering, Multi Queue, Host Memory Buffer among many other features like enhanced data processing, advanced memory access mechanism. In terms of security, these microSD Express cards come with password lock security and data write protection.

The combination of new #hardware capabilities; interface and platform solutions; plus redesigned #software stacks creates new possibilities for the #SDmemorycard user. Learn more from our experts: https://t.co/IchyLDwDDZ pic.twitter.com/JDHgldngF0

— SD Association (@SD_Association) February 19, 2019

But the consumers won’t be able to use and utilise these cards as there are certain limitations. First, the manufacturers would have to use the standard and manufacture new cards in the Express line-up. Second, as the new cards have a different hardware than their predecessors so the smartphone, laptops and other device manufacturers would also have to come up with upgraded and new technology so that their devices could support these microSD Express cards.