In today's world of high-speed data transfers, cameras and their memory cards have been relatively left behind. But, Sony have stopped that with the Sony XQD memory card, based on the PCI-Express specification, the XQD format is aimed at improving digital image capture speed and performance.

It is capable of capturing up to 100 frames in RAW format in continuous shooting mode. Sporting write speeds of 125MB/sec, and theoretical maximum write speeds of 5Gb/s, or roughly 600MB/sec. You can see how this is exciting for photographers. Director of consumer media for Sony Electronics, Viviano Cantu, says:

Advanced shooters want to capture the moment in the highest quality possible, and that often means dealing with massive files like RAW images. Memory card technology has done a great job of keeping pace, but these new cards give an entirely new meaning to speed and performance.

Sony have also launched a USB card reader for transferring data to a PC, as well as an ExpressCard adapter for those with ExpressCard 34 card slots. The XQD cards go on sale next month at a cost of US$129.99 for the 16GB QD-H16, and US$229.99 for the 32GB QD-H32 card. The card reader (MRW-E80) goes for US$44.99. The first camera to support the new format is the just-announced, high-end Nokia D4 DSLR camera.