Industry News: SD Express Delivers New Gigabyte Speeds for SD Memory Cards

Canon Rumors Guy

Canon EOS 40D
CR Pro
Jul 20, 2010
10,779
3,158
Canada
www.canonrumors.com
SAN RAMON, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The SD Association announced today the SD 8.0 Specification for SD Express memory cards receives even faster transfer speeds by using the popular PCI Express® (PCIe®) 4.0 specification delivering a maximum of nearly 4 gigabytes per second (GB/s) data transfer rate. These full-sized cards continue to use the NVMe Express™ (NVMe™) upper layer protocol enabling advanced memory access mechanism. As always SD Express memory cards using SD 8.0 specification maintain backward compatibility.
“SD Express’ use of even faster PCIe and NVMe architectures to deliver faster transfer speeds creates more opportunities for devices to use SD memory cards,” said Mats Larsson, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource. “This combination of trusted and well-known technologies makes it easier for future product designs to leverage the benefits of removable storage in new ways.”

SD Express gigabyte speeds bring new...

Continue reading...
 
Last edited:
Mar 26, 2014
1,443
536
Has any manufacturer made cards / devices supporting UHS-III or SD Express with PCIe Gen 3x1, that the standards committee is churning out new standards?

I don't see any point in releasing UHS-III cards / slots at this time. Nobody would buy UHS-III cards, as it would be limited to UHS-I speeds when SDExpress comes out. For anything larger than a smartphone, I doubt anyone would care about the size advantage, esp as manufacturers solved all the kinks in CFExpress.
 
Upvote 0

cayenne

CR Pro
Mar 28, 2012
2,868
796
I'm a complete noob when it comes to memory card specs, etc....BUT.....since I believe the new R5 will be coming out with 2 slots and one of them is a SD slot, would fast SD cards like this be able to carry the weight of 4K and 8K video?
Would this remove the bottle neck for people that are concerned that if you want to write to both cards at once that the SD card would present a bottleneck?

Just curious.

C
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0
D

Deleted member 381342

Guest
I'm a complete noob when it comes to memory card specs, etc....BUT.....since I believe the new R5 will be coming out with 2 slots and one of them is a SD slot, would fast SD cards like this be able to carry the weight of 4K and 8K video?
Would this remove the bottle neck for people that are concerned that if you want to write to both cards at once that the SD card would present a bottleneck?

Just curious.

C

SD Express and CF Express are quite comparable in speed. It'll be a long time before any application can outrun ether card, that includes 8K video. Though I don't think you'll see a camera that has SDE and CFE slots in it as duel slots of ether would be cheeper to shove in.
 
Upvote 0
Has any manufacturer made cards / devices supporting UHS-III or SD Express with PCIe Gen 3x1, that the standards committee is churning out new standards?

I don't see any point in releasing UHS-III cards / slots at this time. Nobody would buy UHS-III cards, as it would be limited to UHS-I speeds when SDExpress comes out. For anything larger than a smartphone, I doubt anyone would care about the size advantage, esp as manufacturers solved all the kinks in CFExpress.

We're still only using about half of the UHS-II capability. Maybe we'll see these new SDExpress cards in 2040.
 
Upvote 0

RayValdez360

Soon to be the greatest.
Jun 6, 2012
787
555
42
Philadelphia
I'm a complete noob when it comes to memory card specs, etc....BUT.....since I believe the new R5 will be coming out with 2 slots and one of them is a SD slot, would fast SD cards like this be able to carry the weight of 4K and 8K video?
Would this remove the bottle neck for people that are concerned that if you want to write to both cards at once that the SD card would present a bottleneck?

Just curious.

C
no, the circuits would have to be engineered to transfer data that fast.
 
Upvote 0

koenkooi

CR Pro
Feb 25, 2015
3,574
4,110
The Netherlands
I'm a complete noob when it comes to memory card specs, etc....BUT.....since I believe the new R5 will be coming out with 2 slots and one of them is a SD slot, would fast SD cards like this be able to carry the weight of 4K and 8K video?
[..]

Only if Canon has already added support for PCIe mode to its DIGIC, these kind of specifications aren't forward compatible. It won't make existing slots faster. Quite to opposite, SDexpress cards drop down to UHS-I speeds when they can't do PCIe.
So for the R/RP/R5 a regular UHS-II card would be the fasted option for the SD slot.
 
Upvote 0
Mar 25, 2011
16,848
1,835
I'm a complete noob when it comes to memory card specs, etc....BUT.....since I believe the new R5 will be coming out with 2 slots and one of them is a SD slot, would fast SD cards like this be able to carry the weight of 4K and 8K video?
Would this remove the bottle neck for people that are concerned that if you want to write to both cards at once that the SD card would present a bottleneck?

Just curious.

C
The R5 uses technology available at least 2 years ago when the camera was designed. Just like most products, a DSLR is technically out of date when it ships, but its the latest tech that is ppractical to build.

When a new card is announced, it takes years for controllers and reliable software and hardware to get to the market in quantities and at a reasonable price. There may be limited quantities of very expensive hardware a little sooner, but its not mature and it costs a bundle. I suspect a lot of finance people winced at the CFE specification.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Upvote 0

Sharlin

CR Pro
Dec 26, 2015
1,415
1,433
Turku, Finland
Would a card such as this provide any performance improvement in an 80D? Or has it reached its write speed limits with the Sandisk extremes?

The camera only supports UHS-I protocol, which is several generations behind these new-fangled cards. Even if the hardware were faster (it isn't) the protocol limits the maximum speed. These cards would still work, because they're backward compatible, but would give no speedup compared to the fastest UHS-I card on market. Indeed, they could be slower due to having to emulate the legacy protocol.
 
Upvote 0
Mar 25, 2011
16,848
1,835
SD card speeds are advertised for new unused cards or those which have low level formatting. People buy the cards, take a video or fill them up, then format them and the next time they want to take a video, it won't work because the card is far too slow. That's because it is first erasing a block of memory before you can write to it.

So, if using a SD card for video and it has been mostly filled before, or you intend to fill it, do a low level format first. It resets all the memory to as new status. You don't want to do it unless needed, memory does wear out, and resetting every memory cell each time you format does add up.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 3 users
Upvote 0

cayenne

CR Pro
Mar 28, 2012
2,868
796
SD card speeds are advertised for new unused cards or those which have low level formatting. People buy the cards, take a video or fill them up, then format them and the next time they want to take a video, it won't work because the card is far too slow. That's because it is first erasing a block of memory before you can write to it.

So, if using a SD card for video and it has been mostly filled before, or you intend to fill it, do a low level format first. It resets all the memory to as new status. You don't want to do it unless needed, memory does wear out, and resetting every memory cell each time you format does add up.

Oh..that's interesting.

I've got a 5D3....I always format my cards before use (after I've unloaded them to computer)....in the camera. I'd assumed this was a low level format?

Cayenne
 
Upvote 0
May 12, 2015
231
174
I'm a complete noob when it comes to memory card specs, etc....BUT.....since I believe the new R5 will be coming out with 2 slots and one of them is a SD slot, would fast SD cards like this be able to carry the weight of 4K and 8K video?
Would this remove the bottle neck for people that are concerned that if you want to write to both cards at once that the SD card would present a bottleneck?

Just curious.

C
 
Upvote 0
Nov 3, 2012
512
212
All those pins in the back make me nervous. The more rows of pins they add the more flimsy the card becomes.
Sony Tough SD cards have the contacts sitting flush with the card with virtually no chance of damage. I experienced a 7D that bent a pin in the CF card slot. I've broken the ribs separating contacts on regular SD cards. Won't happen with Sony Tough.
 
Upvote 0
I've got a 5D3....I always format my cards before use (after I've unloaded them to computer)....in the camera. I'd assumed this was a low level format?

There's 2 format options. One is a quick format which just resets all the file headers meaning the space on the card is free. The other is a low level format that takes a lot longer comparatively.
 
Upvote 0
Mar 26, 2014
1,443
536
So the take-away is that the R5 has yet to be released, but is already obsolete. How depressing...

"Available at least 2 years ago when the camera was designed" is not the same as "obsolete".

E.g. the four years old 5DmkIV has a UHS-I slot. UHS-I cards are very much in stock, as are SD card readers, and Canon will fix the slot if broken. Nothing obsolete about it.
 
Upvote 0