https://gizmodo.com/new-spec-gives-sd-cards-a-massive-boost-in-speed-1843546534?rev=1589916844134&utm_campaign=Gizmodo&utm_content=&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=twitter

SD Association just announced on Tuesday that new SD Cards that are waaaaaaaaay faster than the fastest current SD Cards could be available as soon as later this year.  

These new SD Cards use can transfer just shy of 4 GB/sec (3940MB/sec), which is faster than the XBox SX's NVMe SSD and not far behind the PS5's SSD speed of 5.5GB/sec. 

These cards only work at that speed in new devices that have reader support for PCIe 4.0 lanes, which means the current Switch systems won't be able to utilize their speed, but future Switch systems certainly could.

Not that it really was that huge of an issue as NVMe memory has already been used in iPhones for ages and UFS 3.1 internal flash storage for Android phones is very fast as well as an internal storage option, but SD Cards themselves getting this blazing fast speed bodes very well for future Switch systems. 

I don't hold my breath on that.

It's 4 times faster than the original SD Express, and about 6 times UHS-III, which is great. But look around at the SD cards you see in stores: Even just UHS-II is still relatively rare as they are much more expensive than normal UHS-I cards.

I just checked for 128GB (which is already above what most people buy except for the Switch) and UHS-1 prices went from 20-60€. UHS-II started at 140€, and I couldn't even find just one UHS-III, let alone a SD-express card. Of course with such a price difference only absolute enthusiasts or people who absolutely need the plus in speed will buy the faster ones

The Switch doesn't need these cards, it's more of a nice bonus.

The internal storage for a Switch 2 will likely either be UFS 3.1 or better or NVMe itself which is what Apple has used for ages on the iPhone. That's already blazing fast anyway. 

So that was never really a big deal.

Maybe though Nintendo may use PCIe 4.0 style lanes for their next-gen cartridge format and they could indeed then have 4GB/sec bandwidth, which would be cool as well if the SD card commission doesn't want to play ball and just sit on these cards.

Cool news for people taking 8k video in RAW.

Of course not, only SSDs can do blast processing.

Another problem is that SD Express needs specific card readers, as they have an additional row of pins. Otherwise they'll only transfer at UHS speeds. And I'm sure that those readers are also still very expensive. Too expensive to use in any console anytime soon.

Pretty much this. We might seem some positive impact on our day-to-day devices maybe in 4-5 years, ie when the price drops from the probably massive release day msrp's.

PCIe 4.0 is going to be pretty standard tech, I wouldn't neccessarily equate their cost with being anywhere close to what it costs to make this stuff. 

SD card commission will charge a high price at first likely because the only type of person who needs this much speed are video professionals are who are shooting like 5K-8K raw video files. For them a couple of hundred bucks is nothing. 

But that doesn't really mean it costs them that much more to make. 

Nintendo could probably get a cartridge slot for example with similar speed probably for a reasonable cost in a few years. 

That's understood, and it was a smart move to couple SD cards to PCI-E lines.

It's just that the producers want to make money from new tech, and thus sell at a high price, especially early on. It will take years until the competition has heated up enough to bring the prices down to a level where SD Express will become a viable choice over the older UHS standards. And like I said, even there UHS-I is still by far and wide the most widespread despite the tech being 10 years old by now and UHS-II being just a year younger yet still very rare. At least the pre-UHS models are slowly dying out in industrialized countries (still saw tons of 2-8GB SDHC cards in the Philippines, so in developing countries, it's still another matter), so they are slowly moving forward.

Yup, but I do think there's nothing really that stops Nintendo from going to their cartridge supplier and saying "hey we'd like something similar for our next-gen carts, PCIe 4.0 type speed". 

That probably is fairly doable for a product a few years down the line. 

SD Card commission wants to move at a snail's pace, that's their call I guess, but Nintendo can still show that to their cartridge supplier and say they want something in that performance range.