PCI-SIG and SD Association in Liaison for SD Express Memory Card

PCI-SIG, the organization responsible for the PCIe industry-standard I/O technology, and the SD Association (SDA), an ecosystem charged with setting interoperable SD memory card standards, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to advance SDA’s SD Express memory card as a component in the PCIe ecosystem.

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SD Express includes both an SD legacy protocol interface and a PCIe interface that delivers up to 985MB/s transfer rate, while maintaining backward compatibility with existing SD hosts in the market.

“PCI-SIG is pleased to work with the SDA to jointly promote the SD Express memory card specification,” said Al Yanes, chairman and president, PCI-SIG. “This liaison will strengthen both communities by furthering innovation in this space and supporting PCIe becoming another strong SD interface option.“

“By relying on successful protocols already in the marketplace, such as PCIe, the SDA gives the industry an advantage saving time in the development process,” said Hiroyuki Sakamoto, president, SDA “The SDA is pleased to work with PCI-SIG on the SD Express test methodology definitions for our members as well as jointly promote it in the market.“

SD Express uses the PCIe 3.0 specification to meet the changing performance levels of mobile and client computing, imaging, gaming, IoT and automotive applications as they adopt faster communication and multi-channel storage protocols designed to make processing data faster.

Under the terms of the MoU, PCI-SIG and the SDA will collaborate on a technical interchange related to SD Express and SD Express Test Guidelines, as well as information related to PCIe electrical certification of SD Express products. The two organizations will also form the PCI-SDA Advisory Team and the SD-PCIe Technical Group whose members are from companies that belong to both the SDA and PCI-SIG.