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From Cameras To AI: The SD Association’s Next Leap

• Evan Kirstel

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Most people think of SD cards as camera accessories. We pull back the curtain with the SD Association to show how SD Express turns that tiny card into an SSD-class powerhouse for creators, PCs, and AI at the edge—without losing the flexibility of removable media. By bringing PCIe and NVMe to the SD form factor, SD Express delivers nine to forty times the performance of legacy cards and far better random I/O, so burst capture, rapid transfers, and on-device inference all feel instant.

We trace how this shift changes product design and user workflows. Creators get faster shoots and simpler post; device makers can build slimmer hardware that still upgrades in seconds. On the capacity front, SDUC pushes the horizon beyond two terabytes toward a 128TB ceiling, with 4TB microSD and 8TB full-size cards emerging. That makes it practical to keep large datasets, video archives, and full AI model versions local, then rotate or update them in the field, no downtime required.

Security is maturing alongside speed. The SD 9.0 specification adds encrypted drive capabilities and host binding, helping enterprises protect data at rest and perform secure firmware or model updates. We highlight a wave of student projects on NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano using microSD Express as primary storage, proving how edge AI benefits from fast, reliable, swappable media. And we share where the standard heads next: endurance, reliability, and fair, transparent performance metrics that help buyers match cards to real workloads.

If you’re building cameras, drones, robots, or compact PCs—or you just want your gear to feel faster—this conversation maps the road ahead for removable storage. Subscribe for more deep dives like this, share with a friend who loves hardware, and leave a quick review to tell us what you’d build with SD Express.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey everybody, in the run-up to CES 2026 in Las Vegas, I'm super excited to chat about the future of SD with the president of the SD Association. Of course, the innovators behind the ubiquitous storage standard that powers all of our connected uh mobile devices these days. Yossi, how are you?

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, Evan. Thank you for hosting me.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, thanks for being here. Of course, everyone knows what SD cards are. But what is the SD Association? Maybe you could talk about that in your journey as president.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, sure. Well, the SD Association is the organization that defines the global standards. That means the ensuring the interoperability, performance, and so on of removable SD memory cards, which become a very popular storage uh media, as you mentioned. While many people think of cameras and phones when they hear SD memory cards, the technology is used in far more places. Today it's powered powering phone, drones, cars, AI devices, and many more. And the newly introduced high-performance SD cards, which SD Express cards, which I will um I hope that we will talk about that more, uh, opens really many more use cases, I hope. And um think of SD as the common language for data storage. SD memory cards are used in billions of devices, and and uh if probably most know, and uh allowing products from many different companies to work seamlessly together. We have about 800 member organizations in the SD Association, uh from memory devices, uh, chipmakers, uh, PCs, even connector vendors, uh, all collaborate with the SD association within the SD Association uh to keep the SD memory cards fast, secure, and universally compatible. Okay, I think that's the main thing. And and uh today I think as the S as the AI gaming and uh other connected devices continue to generate massive amounts of data, SD helps keep the data local. Okay, so devices can work faster, more efficiently. Uh, in fact, uh the big leap in performance increasing SD Express, uh, which we will talk uh, I hope, uh, may open totally new use cases and invite all product manufacturers to consider this card as totally a new type of resource, I hope.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. And your organization has been around for 25 years now, so happy birthday. Yes. Uh was that the the origin of the 25 years ago? Was the first SP card or SP standard?

SPEAKER_01:

Um yeah, uh 25 years ago, uh the the the first standard was introduced in uh in the year 2000, yes. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

And so you mentioned SD Express. I wasn't familiar with that. What what makes it such a big deal and why is its performance, how is its performance so much better?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, um if you think of all SD memory cards as a reliable transportation, then uh I would say that uh uh SD Express is the high speed trade. Okay, I would say it uses PCIe and NVMe technology, uh uh which is the same as used in modern SSDs. And uh even for SD card, uh using PCA Gen 3, a single lane, which is the first standard of SD Express card, it means about nine nine times faster than the existing standard SD card. And if you take the one with PCA Gen 4 by 2 lanes, it's even 40 times faster. And the random performance is also more than 10 times faster than the regular standard card. Uh, this upgrade of interface type uh with all the implications, in fact, uh is matter to all. I think it's it's uh the uh devices like hand handheld cameras, edge systems can perform like like they have a built-in SSD while staying flexible and expandable. Uh consumers benefit from um faster capture, transfer, and access to data. Uh manufacturers gain design flexibility, building smaller devices, allowing users to expand storage later. Design flexibility means also potential new use cases for SD cards, which would never be imagined before we had the existing uh uh the exist before before the uh uh in the past with the existing limited performance. Uh yeah, because of this speed uh performance, uh we are seeing a really a growing adoption across the ecosystem, and the major memory and controller brands already utilize SD Express, and the PC manufacturers are adding uh host support, and it's becoming the standard way to get SSD level performance in portable format, which is very nice.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. And in terms of capacity, um uh it's been amazing to see one and two terabyte uh cards available from Sandisk and others. I mean, the the the scale and the growth and storage capacity performance has just been phenomenal. What's the limit? Where where do you see capacity headed over the next uh couple years?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh you're talking about the SDUC, the ultra capacity cards. It's the new um upgraded capacity range that we introduced also together with the SD Express, but it's unrelated directly to the SD Express, it's just a enhanced capacity and it's above uh uh two terabytes, up to 128 terabytes. Okay. This is the this is the range. However, it's obviously depending on on the on the capability of the technology of being able to condense such an amount of memory in such a small device. To have uh we already heard about introducing um or or just uh coming uh cards with a four terabyte micro SD with four terabyte and even eight terabyte full-size SD cards, which is really amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing. So you talk about this kind of storage, and it's not just about gaming and consumers anymore. You're talking about really enterprise applications, edge use cases, AI running on device instead of the cloud. I imagine that's a whole new universe that's opening up.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, exactly. Uh the all the AI uh part is really very uh exciting us. Uh I would say that um uh uh AI might not be limited to uh massive data centers for much longer. It is as uh industries become more cloud dependent, the need for local and availability of data is increasing. And uh uh beside the evolving of huge data centers of artificial intelligence, an ongoing shift towards the edge is happening, bringing uh processing uh closer to where data is generated. Okay, so uh we uh I hope that we could soon uh see advanced uh generative intelligence built right into everyday devices like uh dash cameras, all the uh AI at the edge, okay. Uh drones, uh industrial robots, uh uh even wearables, and and these devices may handle a lot of local data and AI models, and SDExpress gives them uh this uh answer, like giving a fast, secure way uh to store it. And um all this shift towards edge uh computing uh means the data is processed close to where it is created instead of being sent to the cloud, and it is how uh uh a security camera can recognize a face uh instantly, or uh how medical device can analyze information on the spot or whatever. And and uh that kind of real-time intelligence depends on fast, reliable, local storage, which uh the SD Express can uh can provide, hopefully. Um, maybe I would mention also that um just um it's an opportunity that just recently we had uh uh a competition. The SD Express organized an SD Express uh student competition uh with uh a group of universities around the world, and we had about 21 projects from various highly graded universities that submitted all projects based on the Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano platform, it's a AI capable platform, uh along with the micro SD Express internally, used uh as the main a main memory inside, and most of the projects showed AI at the edge ideas, very nice things. And uh if if uh the the listeners would like to have to read more about that, they can go to the SDA website, and there is more information about the different projects and so on, which is very nice. It showed the really uh proof how SD Express technology can be valuable and and enable such capabilities.

SPEAKER_00:

That's fantastic. Um, of course, security is increasingly a concern. I've never really thought about security on my SD cards, but um you know, encryption and new security features are really fundamental to you know most use cases, particularly in the enterprise. What kind of security features are you building into the SD standards over time?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, um in actually with the SD 9.0 specification, we introduced a few security features, new security features, uh with uh which is uh is a encrypted drive capability, also uh a capability to uh uh to to uh to bound a certain product, bind a certain product to the host, uh to a certain host. Uh various securities that can be used to uh store your data more securely, that it cannot be read by others, or uh or uh doing a secure uh uh update of uh information, of data or firmware uh inside new systems and so on. So this is something that definitely also something that may help for all these uh uh AI usages of the new cards, hopefully.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. And you know, as we look at CES coming up just in a few weeks, not sure if you'll be there, but I'll be there, and I'm sure we'll see a lot of new IoT innovation and all kinds of great stuff happening. But on the uh ST side, what innovation or trends are are you looking forward to? Can you give us a peek into the future over the next, well, I wouldn't say 25 years, but maybe a year or two for uh ST technology?

SPEAKER_01:

Um okay. Um well it it's um it's hard for I mean usually uh as a standard organization, we are not ex uh I mean exposing uh things that are going to be in the future. What I can tell you that we are we do uh work uh we do believe that uh uh uh endurance and uh reliability of cards is something which becomes more and more uh uh required, and and uh and people's or or or uh uh different products care about that. So we are thinking about standardizing things that relate to that, uh and also a ways of measuring uh performance, uh things that uh will make a common ways of do of measuring things and comparing things between different products. Uh so these things that are currently we are working on, but very high level. Uh generally I I yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh okay, yes, please. What um what are you excited about next year? How often do you get together and and meet uh or virtually meet your the members? And uh how can people get involved in the SD association?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So uh we meet uh about we have two General Assembly meetings every year, which is uh by the bylaws. Okay, so we meet face to face at least twice a year in the fall and in the in the uh spring. And um we have this uh usually it's about three days of meeting, two meetings of uh some uh uh interesting uh keynotes uh half of the day, and then we're doing a working session. So we have a compliance committee, a technical committee uh that are working on the next specifications or or how to uh uh promote the SDA, SD expect, and also uh we have the board meetings around that, and and this is the the meet the main meetings if there are additions if there are required more meetings, we are doing that. We have also uh recently a strategy meeting that we are doing also once a week once uh uh a year, but on a general basis, we have uh you know conference calls that we are doing, for example, the technical uh group is the main technical specification group is meeting every week. Uh the marketing committee is meeting once in a while. Um and uh this is done uh quite often. Our next meeting uh is going to be in March. Uh we are we as I said, we have almost 800 companies, however, the actual active companies is much less, unfortunately. There are more companies that are interested in influencing the next generation standard, and and uh and some are just uh joining to get access to all the specifications and get access to all the next uh uh roadmaps or whatever. But we are definitely welcoming that uh especially to have host vendors as much as many as possible because as having more more companies and members, the specs become better. So uh naturally, and and we will be happy if uh we will have more members. Uh, how to join? You can go to stcard.org. This is our uh uh website, and you can see there how to join. And uh uh we'll welcome any any any companies to join, obviously.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. Well, I can't wait to get my hands one day on an eight terabyte uh uh ultra capacity card. Uh uh maybe you can give me the inside track so I can get it early. But in any case, thanks so much, Yelsei, for joining. And um, I'm sure we'll see you and everyone at CES.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks. Take care. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks.