SDIO Simple Specification Version 1.0 DO NOT COPY ©Copyright SD Association, 2000, 2001
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2. SDIO Signaling Definition
2.1 SDIO Card Types
This specification defines two types of SDIO cards. The Full-Speed card supports SPI, 1-bit SD and the 4-bit
SD transfer modes at the full clock range of 0-25MHz. The Full-Speed SDIO devices have a data transfer rate
of over 100 Mb/second (10 MB/Sec). A second version of the SDIO card is the Low-Speed SDIO card. This
card requires only the SPI and 1-bit SD transfer modes. 4-bit support is optional. In addition, Low-Speed SDIO
cards shall support a full clock range of 0-400 KHz. The intended use of Low-Speed cards is to support
low-speed IO devices with a minimum of hardware. The Low-Speed cards support such functions as modems,
bar-code scanners, GPS receivers etc. If a card is a ‘Combo card’ (memory plus SDIO) then Full-Speed and
4-bit operation is mandatory for both the memory and SDIO portions of the card.
2.2 SDIO Card modes
There are 3 signaling modes defined for SD physical specification version 1.01 memory cards that also apply
to SDIO Card:
2.2.1 SPI (Card mandatory support)
The SPI bus topology is defined in section 3.1.2 and the protocol is defined in sections 3.2.2 and 7 of the
SD Memory Card Specifications, PHYSICAL LAYER SPECIFICATION, Part 1,September 2000 Version
1.01. In this mode pin 8, which is undefined for memory, is used as the interrupt pin. All other pins and
signaling protocols are identical to the SD Memory specification.
2.2.2 1-bit SD data transfer mode (Card mandatory support)
This mode is identical to the 1 data bit (narrow) mode defined for SD Memory in section 3.2.1 of the SD
Memory Card specification. In this mode, data is transferred on the DAT[0] pin only. In this mode pin 8,
which is undefined for memory, is used as the interrupt pin. All other pins and signaling protocols are
identical to the SD Memory specification.
2.2.3 4-bit SD data transfer mode (mandatory for High-Speed cards, optional for Low-Speed)
This mode is identical to the 4 data bit mode (wide) defined for SD Memory in section 3.2.1 of the SD
Memory Card specification. In this mode, data is transferred on all 4 data pins (DAT[3:0]). In this mode the
interrupt pin is not available for exclusive use as it is utilized as a data transfer line. Thus, if the interrupt
function is required, a special timing is required to provide interrupts. See section
7.1.2 for details of this
operation. The 4-bit SD mode provides the highest data transfer possible, up to 100 Mb/sec.
2.3 SDIO Host Modes
If a SDIO aware host supports the SD transfer mode, it is recommended that both the 1-bit and 4-bit modes be
supported. While a SDIO host that supports only the 4-bit transfer mode is possible, it’s performance with a
Low-Speed SDIO card would be reduced. This is because the only means to transfer data to and from a
Low-Speed card would be the single byte per command transfer (using the IO_RW_DIRECT command
(CMD52) see
5.1).