- The SD Association says multi-terabyte SDUC cards are already shipping across some sectors
- Sandisk showed 4TB SDUC cards almost two years ago, but still no sign
- SD Express brings speeds in the SSD class, while capacity targets reach 128TB
The SD Association says multi-terabyte SDUC cards are already shipping, with the format starting at 2 TB and scaling up to a theoretical 128 TB.
The industry standards group points to increasing demand from AI, high-definition video, drones and edge computing as the reason capacity continues to rise – which sounds good, although the retail market still tells a different story.
Almost two years ago, Sandisk showed off a 4TB SDUC card at NAB 2024, calling it the first of its kind and hinting at a release the following year.
Multi-terabyte SDUC cards are shipped
Storing large 8K video files and massive photo libraries on a single removable card is something I’m definitely interested in.
Even so, cards of that size are still hard to find in everyday stores, and even 2TB SD cards remain relatively rare.
The SD Association insists that multi-terabyte SDUC cards are already shipping, although it does not specify where these products will actually appear. That could mean industrial, embedded or specialist deployments rather than consumer shelves.
The group’s main message is that capacity and performance increase together. SD Express, which combines PCIe and NVMe interfaces, can reach around 1 GB/s with PCIe 3 x1 and up to around 4 GB/s using PCIe Gen4 x2.
These speeds move SD cards closer to SSD-class performance, especially for tasks like running applications directly from removable storage or handling large AI datasets.
Gaming is also part of the push. The Nintendo Switch 2 uses microSD Express cards for storage, which lets games load and run directly from removable media without the slowdowns associated with older standards.
The association also highlights creators working with 4K to 16K video, along with VR, AR and edge AI devices that produce massive amounts of data. These uses make multi-terabyte cards sound less like excess and more like a practical need.
Still, the gap between standard messaging and what buyers can actually buy is hard to ignore.
So far, the idea of a 4TB or 8TB SD card still seems closer to a roadmap than a routine purchase, although the SD Association says it’s ready.
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