SDXC Raises Interesting Possibilities

I recently read this article on the new SDXC memory card standard. In early 2010, SDXC devices will store up to 64GB of data and transfer data at 52MB/s, but the industry expects capacities up to 2TB and transfer speeds up to 300MB/s within a few years.

This kind of capacity and performance in this form factor raises some interesting possibilities. Perhaps we'll keep all of our personal files on our SD cards and only keep system files on our computers, making it easier to upgrade systems or use multiple computers during the course of the day or week. All of the new MacBooks announced this week are adding an SD card slot, and many Windows PCs already offer this feature.

This will also make it easier to move data between computers and mobile devices like smart phones and media players.

I also wonder about the possibilities for high performance applications. Imagine a small RAID device with one or more USB 3 interfaces and multiple SDXC slots. Striped and mirrored, an array of 16 cards could provide 16TB of storage with aggregate transfer speeds of up to 2400MB/s. When one of the cards starts to 'wear out' — as flash cards will do over time — you just pop it out and replace it with a fresh one. No need to make backups, and no downtime from disk failures.

There are more powerful flash memory technologies available; FusionIO, for example, already offers high performance PCI Express flash cards for servers. However, the mass market aspect of SD cards means the price per GB will be lower than enterprise-class hardware. This makes it attractive for low-end and mid-range applications, and maybe even for enterprise systems looking to take advange of commodity technology.