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Next Generation SD Memory Cards

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One of the other announcements coming out of CES  that got my attention a couple of days ago was the release of details for SD eXtended Capacity (SDXC) the latest iteration of the ubiquitous SD card again upping the capacity from the current 32GB SDHC to a whopping 2TB.

Existing SD and SDHC cards will work in SDXC host devices however existing SD and SDHC host devices will not be compatible with new SDXC cards and .

sdxc_memory_card

for further details check out the SD Association’s web site.

The SDXC specification uses Microsoft's extended file allocation table (exFAT) file system to support its larger capacity and  broad interoperability.

exFAT file system supports increased  capacity beyond the current FAT32 32 GB limitation can handle a 1000+  files in a single directory and file sizes greater than 4 GB. The exFAT specification was intentionally designed to be extensible allowing OEMs to further extend the capability.

An interesting notes is that Windows Embedded CE 6.0 and up provides transactional support for exFAT (TexFAT) however the lack of support for TexFAT within Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 (as far as I have been able to ascertain) currently limits interoperability of this functionality and targeting  its implementation to primarily addressing fix rather than removable storage requirements in the embedded applications.

<Gary>