New ‘dual-row pin' SD cards promise up to 300MB/s

The SD Association has announced that as part of their continuing development of the SD 4.0 standard, new ‘dual-row pin’ SDXC memory cards will soon be available.

The new design allows cards to increase read/write speeds up to 300MB/s for both SDHC and the more recent SDXC memory cards. Devices that include this new ‘dual-row pin’ technology will remain fully compatible with all pre-existing SD, SDHC and SDXC memory cards. The technology passes the higher speed signal through the second row of pins, whilst keeping the other row of pins for legacy devices that don’t support this standard.

Norm Frentz, chairman of the SD Association, claims that “SD can now support high definition video from Hollywood movie studios, television broadcasts, or HD videos taken on your latest vacation.” He also goes on to state that the SD Association is dedicated to maintaining the “value usefulness and longevity” of products built around the highly-popular SD memory card ecosystem.

Currently, Ultra High Speed (UHS-I) SD cards have the highest data transfer speed in the SD range, at around 104MB/s. The new card format is expected to reach shelves in early 2011.