After breaking the density barrier for MMC and SD cards by mass production of its 1GigaByte products, Taiwan-based PDC (Power Digital Card) has announced new technologies to enhance the speed performance of its memory cards.

PDC's high speed SD cards are tested to have write speeds of over 8.6MegaBytes/second (MB/Sec) and read speeds of over 10MB/Sec. PDC's new high speed SD card series have been tested in the market since early December 2003 and has been ranked highly by users. Release of the products on a worldwide level will begin in January of 2004. PDC's high speed and standard SD cards will co-exist in the market, allowing consumers to match their difference in needs.

According to Gen Shueh, Chief Strategy Officer of PDC, "Today's average consumers are really not aware of the different speed performance of existing SD cards on the market. But as digital devices become more demanding for performance, the read and write speed of SD cards will become a major issue to consumers other than pricing and brand recognition. This will be especially true for card usage with digital visual devices as digital camera, digital camcorder, MP4 players, game consoles, digital TV's etc. PDC's release of high density and fast performing cards has opened the door for device manufacturers to design products fully based on SD cards. Today's SD cards already have speed performances exceeding Compact Flash cards and with the introduction of PDC's 1GB SD cards, CF no longer holds high-density advantage. Engineers are now free to design products fully transitioning from CF to SD. PDC's 2GB and 4GB SD Cards are expected to be released soon, making SD the choice of external memory for device manufacturers. Most of the current SD Card products on the market today have statements in regards to speed as: up to 10MB/Sec.

PDC's high speed SD cards are manufactured with its state-of-art, patented injection process technology in line with its standard SD cards. The high speed SD cards are also tested to be totally water-proof, shock-proof, dust-proof, and ESD-proof. All cards are loaded with CPRM encryption keys in case the consumer requires downloading of protected contents into the memory card.