The new SDXC standard announced earlier this year will begin to replace SDHC in 2010. The new memory cards will be able to support speeds as high as 300MB/s and capacities as large as 2TB. Best of all, the new standard is backwards compatible, meaning that SDXC readers will be able to read SDHC, SD, and MMC memory cards.

In order to prepare for this, laptop manufacturers are looking to replace SDHC readers in their laptops with SDXC readers. DailyTech has received information that Lenovo, HP, and Dell are actively working on laptops with SDXC support, but no information is available yet from Apple or how soon SDXC will make its way into MacBooks.

Intel will soon introduce new Westmere-based 32nm Arrandale mobile CPUs, which will feature integrated graphics on the same package. Laptops using the new chips are expected to be cheaper and use less power, greatly extended battery life. Laptop manufacturers are expecting brisk sales from the new designs, which must last until the Sandy Bridge generation of mobile CPUs is ready in 2011.

The issue is complicated by the fact that many SDHC readers are connected internally through a USB 2.0 bus, which does not have enough bandwidth to support SDXC. Connections for SDXC must be made instead through the PCIe bus.

The first products using SDXC are expected to be shown at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in January.