[1] In 2010, the SDA had approximately 1,000 member companies involved in the design and development of SD standards.

These standards are adopted by product manufacturers that make mechanical definitions and environmental requirements); File System Spec (definitions of the file system requirements in SD cards); SDIO and Intelligent SDIO card specifications (wireless LAN and TransferJet interface SD memory cards);[9] SD Host Controller Interface Spec; Advance Security SD specification, implementation and test guidelines.

The founding individual members include: The SD Association held its first meeting on January 28, 2000, in San Francisco[1] and elected the first SDA Board of Directors on April 13.

MicroSD specifications [13] were released in 2005 with SD v2.0 SD- High Capacity (SDHC), introducing memory cards with up to 32 GB of storage in 2006.

[9] In February 2016, the SD Association announced its fastest speed class, Video Speed Class, which delivers real-time multi-file recording for many applications and supports the highest video resolutions and qualities available.

[19] In November 2016, SD Specification 5.1 established the new Application Performance Class to meet technical and market requirements to both run and store applications on SD memory cards while still providing storage of pictures, videos, music, documents, and other data.

[23] UHS-III faster speeds help move large amounts of data generated by data-intense Gbit/s wireless communication, 360-degree cameras, drones, 3D, 4K and 8K videos recorded on SDXC and SDHC memory cards.

The PCIe interface will deliver a 985 MB/s maximum data transfer rate and the NVMe upper layer protocol enables advanced memory access mechanisms.

[33] The association ensures global coverage by having key boards members in each region:[34] The SDA meets quarterly to review spec developments and promotion planning.

General assembly events include an open plenary session in which members receive updates about SDA activities followed by speakers from the industry or market analysts.

Additional meetings held by the SDA include interoperability events, global workshops.