SDXC set to blow your mind next year, with 64GB capacity out of the gate

Kevin Schader, director of communications for the SD Association and all-around great guy, just stated that SDXC cards should be hitting us as early as next year, with a 64GB capacity to begin with. The spec was released to member companies in April, and though Pretec has been parading around a 32GB card, we haven't had a release window of any sort before now. Naturally, it's going to be a slow build up to the theoretical limits of SDXC, with 52MB per second speeds and 64GB cards, instead of the 300MB per second, 2TB cards of our dreams, but we promise not to complain too much along the way.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 13th 2009 2:20AM]

The rule is: Every two years they double the capacity of current technology.

[TheWB Posted Jun 13th 2009 5:36AM]

I'm not jazzed about it at all. Who uses this format -- Fuji and Olympus and both have also incorporated either SD or Compactflash cards usage into their system. A complete waste in my opinion.

[superhobo Posted Jun 13th 2009 7:15AM]

Yeah, this will replace SD, gradually.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 14th 2009 4:14PM]

This is like asking "Who uses USB3?"

[soren121 Posted Jun 13th 2009 7:07AM]

I wish they would stop making multiple versions of the SD card. We now have SD, miniSD, microSD, SDHC, and SDXC. Too many, IMHO.

[excelsium Posted Jun 13th 2009 8:06AM]

it's the only way to enable higher capacities etc.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 13th 2009 2:56PM]

apple will take advantage...

[hazydave Posted Jul 9th 2009 2:54PM]

Just as in the SD->SDHC jump, there's no significant electrical difference here, it's all about data. SDHC went from byte to block addressing and mandated FAT32 support... SDXC is mandating exFAT64 support. Many readers and devices can technically be updated to support the new standard... most will probably not be.

It depends on a the company involved, to a large extent -- are they still supporting that device, or have they moved on. I got stung by this in the last upgrade.. I had a Palm TX, and Palm didn't release an SDHC driver for it. However, they did release it for the Treo 700p, which had the same frickin' CPU. Go figure... that one killed Palm for me, for good.

Some devices won't have the memory capacity... your SDHC camcorder might technically support an upgrade, but is there enough flash on-board to handle FAT32 and exFAT64? And would they push out an update, or just hope you go an buy next year's model?

[hazydave Posted Jul 9th 2009 3:04PM]

And yeah, this SDHC -> SDXC thing wasn't technically necessary at all... they could have done it all with SDHC. True, the 32-bit nature of FAT32 is a problem, though mainly for things like video files.. I reject the claim that it's a huge performance issue, particularly on a media with zero seek times.

But I suppose they want the media itself to be fully defined, thus always interchangeable... so SDHC get locked to FAT32, and SDXC to exFAT64. But it was poorly done. There might have been argument that, when SD was created, the advent of 4GB+ flash cards was far off. But when SDHC was created, it was obvious 32GB was a poor limit.

It's also technically possible someone will produce a 64GB SDHC card, just as there were 4GB cards in plain old SD format. Of course, there's no telling what devices these will work with, and that's another shortcoming of the spec. I have numerous SD/SDHC devices... some claimed to support up to 8GB, some to 16GB, none claimed to support 32GB. There should be some certification that, if it says SDHC, I am assured it'll work with any SDHC card. I have yet to have a card rejected, but it's a question... and 32GB cards will be cheap enough soon for it to get answered.