Earlier this week the CompactFlash Association announced the next generation of storage cards, the XQD. Again with the X. Last year would have been great for X, but this year is XI, after all. And if you take out the Q we have the failed XD card. The imagination is running thing in Japan this year, it seems.
But bad naming practices aren't what has a lot of you raising your eyebrows. The question is: is CompactFlash done?
The short answer is yes. Beyond the issue of bent pins, which has plagued CompactFlash from the beginning, the reality is that we need faster bandwidth everywhere. The old CompactFlash design has managed to push along further than everything thought in this regard without breaking anything, but the XQD (Ex-Cutie) basically builds off PCI Express, the spine of most current computer systems. You may remember that many computers had PCMCIA slots: that was typically direct to PCI bus connections. CF is based on that, but hasn't got to the same level of bandwidth as the bus is capable of.
The question is whether we truly need a new card or not. After all, SD cards have hit 96Mbps now and don't have bendable pin problems (and yes, those that don't believe this is a problem haven't seen the repair lists at a manufacturer making CompactFlash equipment--it's way up there on their list of common problems).
Here's the thing: now that CF and SD cards are ubiquitous and there are plenty of parties driving costs down and taking small profits, the major players would love to have something to reset prices and grab market share with. Their co-conspirators: probably some of the camera companies, who need some new "technology" to point to that they can say their competitors don't yet have.
So, sure, XQD will happen. Do we truly need it? Not any time soon.