Nikon D4 First Camera With XQD Memory

The recently announced Nikon D4 D-SLR  will be the first camera to use the new XQD memory card standard.
XQD is the successor to CompactFlash, which has long been the standard for use in professional cameras. CompactFlash is an aging standard, and first-generation XQD cards promise to deliver a 25 percent increase in throughput over the fastest CF cards. XQD leverages PCI Express technology for data, and can write files at up to 125 megabytes per second, compared to the 91 megabytes per second that the best CF cards currently deliver. Future revisions of XQD promise to go as high as 600 megabytes per second, which promises to be a boon to photographers and videographers alike.
Sony is set to release XQD cards next month, the same time that the D4 will hit the street. According to Nikon, the cards will be able to write up to 100 Raw frames with the D4 in continuous shooting mode before the camera will start to slow down. One concern of note is that only one of the two slots in the D4 supports XQD—the other slot only works with CompactFlash. Professional shooters often use the camera's dual card slots to create a real-time backup of files via mirroring, in which case they'll need to carry two types of memory into the field. Presumably mirroring would also slow the performance of the camera to the slowest card installed, although Nikon wasn't able to confirm this behavior at this time.
The 16GB card is set to retail for $129.99, with the 32GB priced at $229.99. Sony will also make card readers available, in USB 3.0 and ExpressCard/34 form factors, for $44.99 each. The Nikon D4, which you'll need if you want to make use of the memory cards, is also scheduled for a February release. It's priced at a meager $5999.95.