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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Western Digital has demonstrated an SD card [anandtech.com] that can hit up to 880 MB/s and 430 MB/s sequential read and write speeds.

Western Digital demonstrated an experimental SD card featuring a PCIe Gen 3 x1 interface at Mobile World Congress. Meanwhile, the SD Card Association is calling upon the industry to adopt PCIe as a standard interface and to support the development of a complete SD PCIe standard.

Western Digital is demonstrating a system featuring an M.2-to-SD adapter with an SD card that offers 880 MB/s sequential read speeds as well as up to 430 MB/s sequential write speeds, according to the CrystalDiskMark benchmark. The drive uses the existing UHS-II/III pins to construct a PCIe 3.0 x1 interface with the system (via a mechanical adapter) and probably standard PCIe voltage with a converter. The company is not disclosing the type of memory or the controller that power the SD PCIe card, but it is clear that we are dealing with a custom solution. Meanwhile, Western Digital claims that the implementation costs of a PCIe interface is not high as one might expect, as a PCIe x1 PHY is not all that large.

Western Digital further notes that the SD card with a PCIe interface is not standard and will not hit the market any time soon, but is showing off the concept anyhow as they have seen interest from certain parties for this kind of removable storage solutions.

This exceeds the 312-624 MB/s data rates and UHS-III bus specified by version 6.0 (February 2017) of the Secure Digital standard.

Related: Secure Digital 5.0 Standard: Memory Cards Intended for 8K and Virtual Reality Recording [soylentnews.org]
SanDisk Announces a 400 GB MicroSD Card [soylentnews.org]
Half a Terabyte in Your Smartphone? Yup. That's Possible Now [soylentnews.org]

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