- SD Association says multi-terabyte SDUC cards are already available in some industries
- Sandisk introduced 4TB SDUC cards almost two years ago, but there’s still no sign
- SD Express delivers SSD-class speeds while capacity targets reach 128TB
The SD Association says multi-terabyte SDUC cards are already available, with sizes starting at 2TB and going up to a theoretical 128TB.
The industry standards group points to growing demand for AI, high-resolution video, drones and edge computing as the reason why capabilities continue to increase — which sounds great, even if the retail market still tells a different story.
Nearly two years ago, Sandisk introduced 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 Ship
Storing large 8K video files and huge photo libraries on a single removable card is something I’m really interested in.
Yet cards of this size are still difficult to find in everyday stores, and even 2TB SD cards remain relatively rare.
The SD Association insists that multi-terabyte SDUC cards are already available, although it does not specify where these products actually appear. This could mean industrial, embedded or specialized deployments rather than consumer shelves.
The main message of the group is that ability 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 with PCIe Gen4 x2.
These speeds bring SD cards closer to SSD-class performance, especially for tasks like running applications directly from removable storage or managing large AI data sets.
Play is also part of the push. The Nintendo Switch 2 uses microSD Express cards for storage, allowing games to 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, as well as VR, AR and Edge AI devices that produce huge volumes of data. These uses make multi-terabyte cards seem less like an excess and more like a practical need.
Still, the gap between advertised standards and what buyers can actually buy is hard to ignore.
For now, 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 is ready.
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