CompactFlash organization announces CFexpress 4.0 with higher speed of 8GB/s

The CompactFlash Association has announced CFexpress 4.0, storage cards for professional photo and video cameras. The new cards use newer PCIe and NVMe versions, doubling the theoretical throughput speed.

The CFexpress 4.0 cards support PCIe Gen 4 and NVMe 1.4c. With the predecessor, the CFexpress 2.0 standard, this was PCIe Gen 3 and NVMe 1.3. As a result, the largest Type C card supports a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 8GB/s. Previously this was 4GB/s. The smaller cards have fewer PCIe lanes, which means that the theoretical maximum speed of these cards is lower.

Like the 2.0 standard, the new version has three form factors. These are the same as before. The 4.0 standard also uses the same physical interface as 2.0, making the standard backwards compatible. This also means that companies could switch to the new standard more quickly, according to the CFA. The faster speeds allow photographers and videographers to use higher resolutions, frame rates and color depth, states the CFA.

It is not clear when the first CFexpress 4.0 products will appear on the market. More than eighty companies participate in CFA. The previous 2.0 standard appeared in 2019. Sony, Canon and Nikon, among others, use the standard in their products. The companies have previously only used the Type A and Type B form factors; the larger Type C form factor with the fastest theoretical speeds has not been used until now.