Toshiba announces first UHS-II SD cards as world's fastest

Toshiba has announced the Exceria and Exceria Pro ranges of SD cards - the first to conform to the UHS-II standard and the fastest SD cards yet announced. The Exceria Pro cards will be available in 16GB and 32GB sizes from October 2013 and will offer read/write speeds of 260MB/s and 240MB/s respectively. 32GB and 64GB Exceria series cards offering the same read speeds but half the write speed will follow a month later.

The UHS-II standard increases the maximum possible write speed for SD cards to 312MB/s, when used with compatible devices, compared with the 104MB/s maximum offered by UHS-I cards.

Press Release:

Toshiba Unveils New SD Memory Cards Offering World-Fastest Write Speed

- To launch EXCERIA series compliant with UHS-II -

TOKYO—Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced that it will launch a new series of SD memory cards offering the world's fastest data write speed. The latest edition to its line-up of EXCERIA memory cards designed to offer users of high-end digital cameras an excellent experience, the EXCERIA PRO1 and EXCERIA1 cards will be launched in major markets worldwide, starting with Japan in October.

EXCERIA cards compliant with UHS-II will be available in two series. The EXCERIA PRO series will offer photographers a data write speed of 240MB/sec2 the world's fastest3, while the EXCERIA series will write at 120MB/sec. They will allow digital camera users to shoot still images continuously at high speed.

The cards are the first in the EXCERIA line-up to integrate a newly developed controller compliant with UHS-II4 the ultra high speed serial bus interface defined in SD Memory Card Standard Ver. 4.10, and they achieve significantly higher data transfer speeds than earlier UHS-I compliant cards5.

While digital cameras have made huge strides in image quality and versatility, users have long wanted to see improvements in data transfer rates and write times, so as to be able to takes bursts of photographs in quick succession. This demand has grown increasingly strong as high performance digital single-lens reflex cameras and mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras have gained popularity and moved into the mainstream. Further advances in higher resolution image recording (including 4K2K video), will also fuel demand for transfers of data-rich images at high speed.

Looking to the future, Toshiba, a world leader in the NAND flash memory business, will continue to meet market demands by enhancing its line-up of UHS-II compliant SD memory cards.

Notes:

1. EXCERIA PROTM and EXCERIATM are trademarks of Toshiba Corporation.
2. Maximum data writing speed may vary depending on the host device and file size. As of July 2013
3. UHS-II is the ultra high speed serial bus interface in SD Memory Card Standard Ver4.10 that delivers data at 156MB/s by single lane access and 312MB/s by dual lane access.
4. EXCERIA Type 1 SD-GU032G1 (32GB)
5. Read Speed: 95MB/s, Write Speed: 90MB/s

Outline of New SD Memory Cards

1. UHS-II Compliant EXCERIA PRO Card

2. UHS-II Compliant EXCERIA Cards

Note: Product names above are for the Japanese market.

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Comments

Total comments: 28

By Prakash Heda (3 months ago)

best for windows 8.1 baytrail tablets

0 upvotes

By km25 (3 months ago)

I just bought a Sand Disk, rated @ 90/95 speed. Maybe camera companies show give out chart, on line so they may up date it. So far my XPRO-1 does not seem as if it waiting for anything.

0 upvotes

By Vidriosis (3 months ago)

With cameras such as the new Blackmagic pocket camera with storage rates of 220 Mbps (ProRes 422) this is going to be step in the right direction.

0 upvotes

By BSommer (3 months ago)

well, it would be nice if that company would give a guaranteed minimum write speed as well.
Its non-sense to know the possible best peak write speed that card can get (under for-sure special conditions).
This UHS standard definition is simply wrong and producer friendly, but should have been defined customer friendly (the older speed Class ratings were this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UHS-II#Speeds ) in my view. I want to know the guaranteed minimum speed and I want that high!

Comment edited 3 minutes after posting

0 upvotes

By DaytonR (3 months ago)

the highest speed class currently approved by the SD Card association is class 10 so this card will most likely be rated that class unless they introduce a new class with SD specification version 4 , ...

0 upvotes

By DaytonR (3 months ago)

Oh wow , this is an interesting development !

0 upvotes

By jkoch2 (3 months ago)

The Luddite and miser in me say that mere SDHC class 4 is good enough for burst of 4mb stills or 28mbps AVCHD video. The quest for giant, uncompressed files is a tad futile in a world that views most images on 7" screens or larger ones with at most 1920x1080 resolution. Will the world PAY for product that involves huge files or advanced post-processing? Non credo.

A miracle, though, that Class 10 card memory now sells for under $1 / gigabyte. Will the cost of SSD memory for computers get that cheap too?

0 upvotes

By Impulses (3 months ago)

Actually, SSD drives are already well below $1/GB, even under $0.50/GB in some cases (or close to it). I bought my second 128GB Samsung 830 towards the end of last year for $70, it was one of the better drives at the time too (they were just being cleared out for the new 840 line, which isn't much on aimprovement unless you step up to the more expensive 840 Pro).

I actually paid more per GB for the 32GB SanDisk card I just got than for that SSD (a 45MB/s UHS-1, paid $33 IIRC). Outside of deals I think the cost per GB is actually pretty close, depending on capacity, speeds, etc. You can get 500GB drives for under $375, good ones too with a decent warranty etc. Cost per GB of micro SD has actually been dropping faster than for SD.

0 upvotes

By peevee1 (3 months ago)

Very nice. Including specification of speeds right on the camera - the classes are not precise enough. But do they follow any established measuring standard?

Now the cameras should start actually supporting the speeds. Buffer sizes might become irrelevant. :)

0 upvotes

By Peter K Burian (3 months ago)

This type of news item requires some additional info. Otherwise it's just data from a press release. (DPReview usually does a good job of this, but not this time.)

e.g. Do any cameras benefit from the new UHS-II cards? Or do current cameras merely provide UHS-I speed with such cards? i.e. Do we need to wait for future cameras that will be able to take advantage of the UHS-II speed?

Does Toshiba even market cards under its own name? (I have never seen one) If not, what companies use the Toshiba technology? i.e. What brands should we look for with this technology?

And when (in future) are such cards likely to be available??

With a google search I found the answer to the first question. (Current cameras can NOT provide the fast speed with the II cards). And the last question (Oct. or Nov. 2013) but I'm surprised DPR did not provide such info.

Comment edited 2 times, last edit 5 minutes after posting

1 upvote

By HowaboutRAW (3 months ago)

A date for card availability is in the article.

It’s generally known that cameras don’t support faster cards than whatever the firmware is specified to support. Though my Samsung NX100 runs/processes faster with a fast U1 card than it does with a supposedly fast class 10 card, and the camera body is not supposed to be able to take advantage of a U1 card’s speed. So I’m guessing the general rule is: “can’t take full advantage of new faster unsupported card formats but gets a bit of a boost anyhow”.

As someone else below points out: The Nikon D7100 clearly can’t take full advantage of the fastest U1 cards available, which have a write speed of 90MB per second. And I can confirm this point.

A Google search of the terms: "toshiba sd card" yields some results:

At Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Secure-Digital-Memory-SD-K32G2B8TRT/dp/B007SRLF6G

Then this Toshiba press release from 2006:

http://www.toshiba.com/taec/news/press_releases/2006/memy_06_333.jsp

0 upvotes

By scrup (3 months ago)

I had an old 2GB Toshiba SD card so they definitely market their own cards

1 upvote

By DaytonR (3 months ago)

@ scrup

I also have an old Toshiba card , they made them quite colorfull in old days ... :)

0 upvotes

By mpgxsvcd (3 months ago)

Almost 2 Gigabits per second max speed. Now that is fast. Finally you will see lossless and perhaps RAW video become a reality in consumer products.

Note: Just because it is written in a lossless manner doesn't mean it is the RAW data from the sensor. You can write to a lossless format after color profiles have been applied. Then the video is no longer the RAW untouched data as it was read from the sensor.

A lot of people think that lossless and RAW are synonymous. In an ideal world that would be the case. You always want both if you can get it. In reality writing to a lossless format really just depends on the cards write speed and perhaps the cameras buffer. Writing a RAW and lossless file presents even more issues than just the write speed.

1 upvote

By Carsten Pauer 2 (3 months ago)

Nice...
...now speed up the Write-Speed from this 32GB SD-Cards to 3x and We have the same Speed to fill the SD-Card as my aged Extreme IV CF-Card.

0 upvotes

By AshMills (3 months ago)

Eh?

1 upvote

By Juhaz (3 months ago)

Extreme IV cards are rated as 40-45MB/s, 5-6 times slower than the Pro version of this. Even Sandisk's most recent, fastest Extreme Pro cards only reach 100MB/s.

Are you confusing Mbit/s with MBytes/s?

1 upvote

By viking79 (3 months ago)

Agree, SD spec is faster than current CF spec. CF is a good format, but honestly doesn't have much future, even pro level cameras are starting to move away from it.

0 upvotes

By BJL (3 months ago)

The fastest of these new SD cards has 240MB/s write speed, faster than the 167MB/s ["1000X"] of the fastest new UDMA-7 version of Compact Flash.

In fact, I believe that Compact Flash is now at the speed limit if the obsolescent PATA interface that it uses. To get faster, one of the dueling CF successors would have to be used, CFast [uses eSATA, adopted by Canon] or XQD [uses PCI Express, adopted by Nikon and Sony]. I do not see either of those being adopted outside of some big, expensive high end photo-journalist type DLSRs and some video cameras ... and the war between those two formats increases the chance that SD will defeat them both.

Comment edited 2 times, last edit 46 seconds after posting

1 upvote

By Dennis Linden (3 months ago)

Seems perfect for the soon to be announced :-P D400 !!! yahoo...

0 upvotes

By BRPWS (3 months ago)

It would be great to know what cameras will actually support this kind of speed and UHS II.

1 upvote

By nekrosoft13 (3 months ago)

currently.... none

6 upvotes

By DaytonR (3 months ago)

we will know some time in 2015 ..........

0 upvotes

By G Davidson (3 months ago)

So this kind of card could be the fix for cameras with a fast shooting speed, but too small a cache memory? (I'm thinking of the D7100 here).

0 upvotes

By d3xmeister (3 months ago)

Could be. I remember one user tested the D7100 without an SD card in it and it just burst away at 6 fps forever.

0 upvotes

By SHood (3 months ago)

The D7100 can only support up to 45mb/s so it cannot even take advantage of the faster 95mb/s card currently available. It'll be a while before cameras can take advantage of 240mb/s.

1 upvote

By Impulses (3 months ago)

Hmm, guess it depends on the RAW file size and burst speed selected? (among other things...) A series of 20MB+ files at 6fps could still choke the slower non-Pro (just), any faster or larger (file) and you'd need the Pro card and it's 240MB/s. I guess as long as file size is under 40MB/s then that card should be able to handle an infinite 6fps burst, provided the controller in the camera can deal with it etc.

0 upvotes

By Chuck Steenburgh (3 months ago)

As mentioned in some of the other comments...the D7100 (and every other camera that supports the UHS standard) only supports UHS-I not UHS-II, so you're not going to see any real speed difference in the D7100.

And to correct one the comments below...the D7100 tops out at around 60 MB/sec with the best UHS-I cards today.

http://sportsphotoguy.com/d7100-raw-burst-test/

0 upvotes

Total comments: 28