xqd

COLOGNE, Germany -- There's room for a higher-end flash card format that's faster and more capacious than SD Card, and for years, CompactFlash has occupied that market niche.

But CompactFlash is running out of steam, and finding a successor to CompactFlash just got a lot messier courtesy of a new standard that arrived this week at the Photokina trade show here.

Last year, Nikon and Sony carried the XQD format to market as the would-be CompactFlash successor, with Nikon's flagship D4 camera accepting the cards and Sony making the cards. But Canon and professional camera maker Phase … Read more

Lexar, one of the top-shelf makers of flash memory cards, said today it will support the new XQD format with new models that will go on sale in the third quarter.

For the mainstream flash card market, SD dominates when it comes to price and usage in cameras, video cameras, and devices including tablets and PCs. But though bulkier, CompactFlash, maintains a foothold in the higher-end market such as professional SLR cameras.

As CompactFlash aged, though, Sony, Nikon, and Lexar rival SanDisk came up with XQD as a faster, smaller successor to CompactFlash. One big selling point is fast transfer speed -- 2.5Gbps initially with 5Gbps planned with an upgrade to its underlying data-transfer technology, called PCI. The first big XQD use was Nikon's top-end D4 SLR, and Sony offers XQD cards, but so far there hasn't been much evidence of enthusiasm beyond that.

SanDisk hasn't announced XQD support, and Lexar had been noncommittal. No more.

"We are committed to offering innovative and industry-leading photography solutions, which is why we're working with Nikon to offer and co-market XQD memory cards. We view the XQD standard as one of the most logical ways to increase interface speed beyond that of existing CompactFlash technology," said Wes Brewer, Lexar's vice president of products and technology, in a statement. … Read more

In a decision inauspicious for XQD, SanDisk is skipping over the new memory card format for high-end cameras.

"At this time, SanDisk has chosen not to productize the XQD format," SanDisk spokeswoman Wendy Vlieks told CNET News late yesterday.

The ringing non-endorsement is particularly notable since SanDisk helped create the format in the first place.

The comment also means that XQD--developed by the CompactFlash Association (CFA) as a successor to CF cards--currently lacks support from the two top-tier flash card makers. The other, Lexar, was noncommittal about XQD last week: "As a leading CFA member, Lexar has … Read more

It's flash card season at CES (especially given the shutterbug boost by the conjoined Photo Marketing Association show), and SanDisk has a contribution with high-capacity mid-range SDXC cards.

The two SanDisk Extreme models, 64GB and 128GB, can transfer data at 45MBps. That's less than half the speed of the company's top-end Extreme Pro line of SD cards at 95MBps, but it should be good enough for many photographers and videographers.

The high capacity comes with a price premium--prices for the cards are $200 and $400--but could be useful for those shooting lots of video or traveling away … Read more

Lexar announced a gaggle of new SD memory cards at CES today, with 400X and 600X data-transfer speeds to keep up with professionals' needs higher resolution videos and photos.

The SDHC and SDXC cards use the UHS-I interface for faster transfer speeds (SDXC is a newer version of the SD standard that extends to higher memory capacities.) Most of them will arrive in February, but Lexar is particularly chuffed about a 400X 128GB SDXC card due in April that the company boasts will be the first at that capacity using UHS-I.

For those who prefer absolutes, 400X translates to 60MBps … Read more

Just in time for the flagship Nikon D4 SLR, Sony has announced an XQD flash memory card--the first example of a new format developed with better speed and capacity than its CompactFlash predecessor.

Most devices these days use smaller SD Card technology, but high-end SLR cameras from Canon, Nikon, and Sony still keep CompactFlash alive for performance and capacity reasons. The new XQD format follows in the same direction, trying to keep ahead of SD by borrowing the PCI Express (PCIe) high-speed serial communications link interface from computers.

Sony announced two models of the card, the 16GB QD-H16 card for $… Read more

Lexar announced a 1000X-rated CompactFlash memory card line today that the company guarantees can keep pace with professional-quality video recording.

The 1X speed from days of yore meant 150KBps, and the new line of 1000X cards reaches sustained read speeds of 150MB per second. Write speeds are a smidgen slower--966X, or 145MBps--but still enough to keep up with the Video Performance Guarantee (VPG-20) "to enable professional-quality video capture at high frame rates with no dropped frames," the company said.

The cards are priced for professionals, too, with retail prices of $169.99 for 16GB, $299.99 for 32GB, $… Read more

The CompactFlash Association has finished its work designing a successor to today's high-end memory card format, naming its successor XQD and promising much higher data-transfer speeds.

CompactFlash, unlike many other memory card formats, has managed to withstand the onslaught of SD Card, but it's relegated to a high-end niche such as professional SLR cameras and Canon's new C300 cinema-oriented videocamera. CompactFlash capacity and transfer speeds beat SD today, but to stay ahead of the competition, it's got to improve.

Enter XQD, a project the CompactFlash Association announced last year. The new cards use the PCI Express … Read more