Toshiba Corp. has announced the launch a new line of high performance CompactFlash (CF) memory cards, the Exceria Pro series, expressly targeting the digital single lens reflex camera market. The new cards will be compatible with CF revision 6.0 and will thus offer performance that is even higher compared to XQD, a proprietary card format developed by Nikon and Sony.

The initial line-up of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB cards will come to market in spring of 2013 and offer the world's highest level read (up to 160MB/s) and write (up to 150MB/s) speeds. Exceria Prowill position Toshiba to meet the demands of the high-end DSLR market, including high resolution image capture, sustained continuous shooting, HD video recording and high speed data transfers to other devices.

The Exceria Pro CF cards integrate Toshiba's high performance NAND flash memory and specially developed dedicated firmware. They achieve a read speed of 160MB/s and write speed of 150MB/s4, the highest level yet reported for a memory card. XQD 1.0 cards support data rates of up to 125MB/s.

The new cards are compliant with the CompactFlash revision 6.0 and compatible with the UDMA7 high speed interface, ensuring they can support high performance DSLRs to the full. The cards are also compatible with the latest video performance guarantee standard, VPG-20. VPG-20 secures Full HD video capture streams at a minimum write speed of 20MB/s for compatible host devices and recording media. VPG-20 enables high quality Full HD video capture at high frame rates with no dropped frames.

Toshiba did not announce pricing of Exceria Pro memory cards, but it is hard to expect their prices to be low, especially, given positioning on the professional markets.

The market for DSLR is expected to grow by some 50% in the period 2012 to 2015 and demand for CF cards will grow with it. Toshiba aims to capture a 30% market share by 2015 by developing high performance memory cards.

Tags: Toshiba, CompactFlash, XQD, Exceria Pro, NAND, Flash