It's easy to claim to be first to do something, harder to achieve it. Toshiba has claimed it will be the first to launch an SDXC memory card, but with shipments not due to begun until Spring 2010, there's plenty of time for some other Herbert to get in ahead of it.

The SDXC format, launched in January 2009, adds exFAT - aka FAT 64 - file-system support to the memory card family. That enables capacities of up to 2TB, though Toshiba has only promised 64GB product so far.

Toshiba said the card would support HS104, a high-speed data transfer technology that's part of the SD 3.0 spec providing 104MB/s speed "in the SD interface". That translates to 35MB/s maximum write and 60MB/s read speeds.

With a ship date so far off, it's no wonder Toshiba isn't saying how much the SDXC card will cost. Not that there are any gadgets out yet that can take it... ®

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