SD Association planning UHS-III memory cards with 624MB/sec transfer rates
posted Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 8:05 PM EDT
At the CP+ trade show in Japan, the SD Association today unveiled the next generation of ultra-high-speed SD cards, UHS-III, which doubles the transfer speed of UHS-II, going from 312MB/sec to a whopping 624MB/sec.
While the adoption of UHS-II cards is still very much in-progress, with a growing number of cameras beginning to support this standard, the SD Association is already looking ahead to meet the storage and transfer needs for high-resolution photos and videos, such as with 4K and 8K content, 360-degree cameras and drones.
The move from UHS-I to II was a fairly big jump, as the UHS-II cards introduced an additional row of contacts, which meant camera manufacturers had to utilize new card slots for this updated bus interface. Thankfully, the new UHS-III cards use the same dual-row contact design as the II cards, which should make adoption of the higher-speed card much easier.
There's no information yet as to when UHS-III cards will hit the market, as this new spec was just recently finalized, but if you're hoping to buy a 4K, 8K or other high-resolution camera in the future, you'll thankfully have some nice, ultra-fast, high-capacity SD cards to speed up your workflow.
The new UHS-III SD cards will be available in both full-size SDHC and SDXC cards as well as microSDHX and microSDXC formats. For more information, read the SD Association's full press release here (PDF).