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takyon writes:

SD Express will allow SD cards to reach read/write speeds of up to 985 MB/s. Now controllers for the standard are starting to appear:

Last year the SD Association published its Secure Digital 7.0 standard that defines SD Express cards. At this year's Computex, Realtek demonstrated one of the industry's first SD Express controllers for appropriate card readers. The RTS5261 chip already exists in silicon, so it is a matter of time before it is used for actual products.

[...] Realtek's RTS5261 supports everything mandated by the SD 7.0 specification and connects to hosts using a PCIe 3.0 interface. The controller can work with SDUC cards featuring capacities of up to 128 TB at sequential read/write speeds of up to 985 MB/s. Actual prototypes of SD Express cards from Western Digital/SanDisk seem to be slightly slower than that, yet still considerably faster when compared to existing SD UHS-II cards.

SD 7.1 extended Express speeds to microSD cards. Phison showed off a controller for capacities up to 512 GB:

Phison's PS5017 controller is compliant with the SD 7.1 specification, so it can be used both for SD Express and microSD Express cards. The chip supports various types of 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND memory featuring ONFI or Toggle 2.0 interfaces, but total capacity is limited to 512 GB for some reason. Performance wise, the controller promises up to 900 MB/s sequential read speed as well as up to 500 MB/s sequential write speed, which is good enough considering types of memory that it will be used with.

It's only a matter of time before capacities hit 2 TB and above, and higher sustained read/write speeds would be appreciated.

Related: Western Digital Demos SD Card Using PCIe Gen 3 x1 Interface for 880 MB/s Read Speed
SD Association Raises Max Capacity to 128 TB, Speed to 985 MB/s Using PCIe and NVMe
Lexar Beats Others to Market with a 1 TB SD Card
Micron and SanDisk (Western Digital) Announce 1 TB MicroSD Cards (available)

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