Toshiba announces world's largest, smallest, SDXC memory card

Toshiba announced a few firsts today — the world’s first SDXC memory card, the world’s fastest memory card and the world’s first 64GB memory card in the SD card form factor. Oh and they all apply to the same card — the excitingly titled UHS104 SDXC Memory card THNSU064GAA 2BC. We’ll call it the UHS104 to keep things simple.

There's little information other than what’s contained in the short press release so far, so here’s an executive summary — after the cut. 

The SDXC memory card specification (not to be confused with xkcd) was first released in April this year and it increases storage capacity from the SDHC card limit of 32Gb to a whopping — and purely theoretical — 2Tb. Data transfer rates are also massively increased, from the 6Mbit/sec of SDHC to up to 300Mbit/sec. Again, theoretically.

Toshiba’s UHS104 doesn’t quite attain these lofty heights, but 64Gb of storage on a piece of plastic that’s the size of a postage stamp is not to be sniffed at. It can still write data at up to 35MBit/sec and read it at rates up to 60Mbit/sec, too. Mass production of the card (and it’s equally speedy 16Gb and 32Gb siblings) isn’t expected to start until next year and there’s no word on price yet. We can, however, confidently predict that it will be “a lot”.

Incidentally, the SDXC specification also covers microSD cards, so we’ll leave you with this photo that shows the difference between 1Gb IBM hard disk from two decades ago and its solid-state equivalent from just two years ago. You’ll just have to imagine 64 of those mechanical brutes sat next to a sliver of black plastic that’s the size of your little fingernail to bring the photo up to date.

Photo source: Fosfor Gadgets

[ Toshiba]