SD Express cards with 4x the transfer speed of existing cards are coming soon.
SD cards are set to get four-times faster thanks to the new SD 8.0 Specification for SD Express memory cards.
The SD Express memory card standard was introduced back in June, 2018 and brought with it the promise of 128TB cards enjoying transfer speeds of up to 985MB/s. Two years on and the SD 8.0 spec brings with it a four-fold increase in transfer speeds to offer a maximum of 4GB/s (3,940MB/s).
The SD Association managed to achieve such a big increase in transfer speeds by adopting the PCI Express (PCIe) 4.0 specification. The new cards will use two PCIe 4.0 lanes, which enable them to achieve 4GB/s speeds, but only if used in a card reader/device that also supports the 8.0 spec. Thankfully, they will also retain backwards compatibility, so you can purchase one of these cards for use with older devices knowing it will get faster when you upgrade.
