The SD Association announced today UHS-III, doubling the fastest SD memory card transfer rate up to 624 megabytes per second (MB/s).

UHS-III faster speeds help move large amounts of data generated by data-intense Gbps wireless communication, 360-degree cameras, drones, 3D, 4K and 8K videos recorded on SDXC and SDHC memory cards.

Since it is fully backwards compatible, devices offering UHS-III bus interface will accept the billions of existing SD memory cards in the market today.

The UHS-III high-speed interface signals are assigned to the second row of SD memory card pins introduced with UHS-II. This newest bus transfer speed option will be available in full-size SDHC and SDXC cards, as well as microSDHC and microSDXC cards. It does not change the physical size or shape of the cards as the move from UHS-II to UHS-III involves only a PHY change.