A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using flash memory. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices, such as Digital cameras as well as in many early games consoles such as the Nintendo Wii. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a socket instead of protruding USB flash drives. [1]
Common types of flash memory card include SD cards (including microSD), Sony's Memory Stick and CompactFlash. However, SD cards are by far the most common type of memory cards nowadays[ citation needed ].
The basis for memory card technology is flash memory. [2] It was invented by Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba in 1980 [3] [4] and commercialized by Toshiba in 1987. [5] [6]
The development of memory cards was driven in the 1980s by the need for an alternative to floppy disk drives that had lower power consumption, had less weight and occupied less volume in laptops. Some were also marketed as a lower cost alternative to ROM cartridges. [7] Several competing and incompatible memory card formats were developed by several vendors, [8] such as for example the Bee Card, Astron SoftCards, [9] Sega Cards, NEC UltraLite memory cards, [10] [11] and the Mitsubishi Melcard which came in variants using 60 and 50 connector pins. The Sega Card was developed as a cheaper alternative to game cartridges. [12] Some memory cards were used for memory expansion in laptops. [13] [14] [15]
JEIDA, the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association, began to work on a standard for memory cards in 1985, and developed the JEIDA memory card in 1986. [16] The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was an industry association created in 1989 to promote a standard for memory cards in PCs, and worked closely with JEIDA, adopting their 68 pin connector design. The specification for PCMCIA type I cards, later renamed PC Cards, was first released in 1990, and unified the JEIDA memory card standard with the PC Card standard. [15] [17] This format later included support for other devices besides memory cards. [17] PC Card was among the first commercial memory card formats to come out, but is now mainly used in industrial applications and to connect I/O devices such as modems.
Some early memory cards used SRAM as a storage medium, which required a lithium battery to keep the contents in the SRAM. These cards were faster than their flash counterparts. Some of the first PCMCIA cards had capacities of 1 to 5 MB and cost US$100 per MB. [18] Other early cards such as the Bee Card contained non-modifiable ROM, Write once read many EPROM or rewriteable EEPROM memory. [19] In 1992, SanDisk introduced FlashDisk, a PCMCIA card and one of the first memory cards that did not require battery power to retain its contents, as it used flash memory. [20] [18]
Since 1994, a number of memory card formats smaller than the PC Card arrived. The first one was CompactFlash and later SmartMedia and Miniature Card. The desire for smaller cards for cell-phones, PDAs, and compact digital cameras drove a trend that left the previous generation of "compact" cards looking big. In 2000 the SD card was announced. SD was envisioned as a single memory card format for several kinds of electronic devices, that could also function as an expansion slot for adding new capabilities for a device. [21] In 2001, SmartMedia alone captured 50% of the digital camera market and CF had captured the professional digital camera market.
However, by 2005, SD and similar MMC cards had nearly taken over SmartMedia's spot, though not to the same level and with stiff competition coming from Memory Stick variants, as well as CompactFlash. In industrial and embedded fields, even the venerable PC card (PCMCIA) memory cards still manage to maintain a niche, while in mobile phones and PDAs, the memory card has become smaller.
Initially memory cards were expensive, costing US$3 per megabyte of capacity in 2001; [22] this led to the development of miniaturized rotating disk memory devices such as the Microdrive, PocketZip and Dataplay. The Microdrive had higher capacities than memory cards at the time. All three concepts became obsolete once flash memory prices became lower and their capacities became higher by 2006. [20]
Since 2010, new products of Sony (previously only using Memory Stick) and Olympus (previously only using XD-Card) have been offered with an additional SD-Card slot. [23] Effectively the format war has turned in SD-Card's favor. [24] [25] [26]
This section needs expansionwith: info on which of those are dead. You can help by adding to it. (December 2021) |
Name | Abbreviation | Form factor (mm) | DRM |
---|---|---|---|
PC Card | PCMCIA | 85.6 × 54 × 3.3 | No |
CompactFlash I | CF-I | 43 × 36 × 3.3 | No |
CompactFlash II | CF-II | 43 × 36 × 5.5 | No |
CFexpress Type A | CFA | 20 × 28 × 2.8 | Unknown |
CFexpress Type B | CFX | 38.5 × 29.8 × 3.8 | Unknown |
CFexpress Type C | ? | 54 × 74 × 4.8 | Unknown |
SmartMedia | SM/ SMC | 45 × 37 × 0.76 | ID |
Memory Stick | MS | 50.0 × 21.5 × 2.8 | MagicGate |
Memory Stick Duo | MSD | 31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6 | MagicGate |
Memory Stick Pro Duo | MSPD | 31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6 | MagicGate |
Memory Stick Pro-HG Duo | MSPDX | 31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6 | MagicGate |
Memory Stick Micro M2 | M2 | 15.0 × 12.5 × 1.2 | MagicGate |
Miniature Card | ? | 37 × 45 × 3.5 | No |
Multimedia Card | MMC | 32 × 24 × 1.5 | No |
Reduced Size Multimedia Card | RS-MMC | 16 × 24 × 1.5 | No |
MMCmicro Card | MMCmicro | 12 × 14 × 1.1 | No |
Nintendo Switch | NS | 31 × 21 × 3 | ? |
P2 card | P2 | 85.6 × 54 × 3.3 | No |
PS Vita | PSV | ? | ? |
SD card | SD | 32 × 24 × 2.1 | CPRM |
SxS | SxS | 75 × 34 × 5 | No |
Universal Flash Storage | UFS | ? | Unknown |
microSD card | microSD | 15 × 11 × 0.7 | CPRM |
xD-Picture Card | xD | 20 × 25 × 1.7 | No |
Intelligent Stick | iStick | 24 × 18 × 2.8 | No |
Serial Flash Module | SFM | 45 × 15 | No |
µ card | µcard | 32 × 24 × 1 | Unknown |
NT Card | NT NT+ | 44 × 24 × 2.5 | No |
XQD card | XQD | 38.5 × 29.8 × 3.8 | Unknown |
Nano Memory card | NM Card | 12.3 × 8.8 × 0.7 | Unknown |
Standard | SD | UFS Card | CFast | XQD | CFexpress | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Version | 3.0 | 4.0 | 6.0 | 7.0 [28] | 8.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 | 4.0 |
Launched | 2010 Q2 | 2011 Q1 | 2017 Q1 | 2018 Q2 | 2020 Q1 | 2016 Q2 | ? | 2008 Q3 | 2012 Q3 | 2011 Q4 | 2014 Q1 | 2017 Q2 | 2019 Q1 | 2023 Q3 |
Bus | UHS-I | UHS-II | UHS-III | PCIe 3.0 x1 | PCIe 4.0 x2 | UFS 2.0 | UFS 3.0 | SATA-300 | SATA-600 | PCIe 2.0 x1 | PCIe 2.0 x2 | PCIe 3.0 x2 | PCIe 3.0 x1/x2/x4 | PCIe 4.0 x1/x2/x4 |
Speed (full-duplex) | 104 MB/s | 156 MB/s | 624 MB/s | 985 MB/s | 3938 MB/s | 600 MB/s | 1200 MB/s | 300 MB/s | 600 MB/s | 500 MB/s | 1000 MB/s | 1970 MB/s | up to 4GB/s | up to 8GB/s |
This section needs additional citations for verification .(December 2011) |
Many older video game consoles used memory cards to hold saved game data. Cartridge-based systems primarily used battery-backed volatile RAM within each individual cartridge to hold saves for that game. Cartridges without this RAM may have used a password system, or would not save progress at all. The Neo Geo AES, released in 1990 by SNK, was the first video game console able to use a memory card. AES memory cards were also compatible with Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinets, allowing players to migrate saves between home and arcade systems and vice versa. [29] [30] Memory cards became commonplace when home consoles moved to read-only optical discs for storing the game program, beginning with systems such as the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega-CD.
Until the sixth generation of video game consoles, memory cards were based on proprietary formats; Later systems used established industry formats for memory cards, such as FAT32.
Home consoles now commonly use hard disk drive storage for saved games and allow the use of USB flash drives or other card formats via a memory card reader to transport game saves and other game information. Though some consoles have implemented cloud storage saving, most portable gaming systems still rely on custom memory cartridges to store program data, due to their low power consumption, smaller physical size and reduced mechanical complexity.
PC Card is a parallel peripheral interface for laptop computers and PDAs.
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600, is a home computer introduced in March 1992. It is the final Amiga model based on the Motorola 68000 and the 1990 Amiga Enhanced Chip Set. A redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, it adds the option of an internal hard disk drive and a PCMCIA port. Lacking a numeric keypad, the A600 is only slightly larger than an IBM PC keyboard, weighing approximately 6 pounds (2.72kg). It shipped with AmigaOS 2.0, which was considered more user-friendly than earlier versions of the operating system.
The Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, originally launched by Sony in late 1998. In addition to the original Memory Stick, this family includes the Memory Stick PRO, a revision that allows greater maximum storage capacity and faster file transfer speeds; Memory Stick Duo, a small-form-factor version of the Memory Stick ; the even smaller Memory Stick Micro (M2), and the Memory Stick PRO-HG, a high speed variant of the PRO to be used in high-definition video and still cameras.
CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994.
Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary, non-volatile, flash memory card format the SD Association (SDA) developed for use in portable devices.
In computing, a removable media is a data storage media that is designed to be readily inserted and removed from a system. Most early removable media, such as floppy disks and optical discs, require a dedicated read/write device to be installed in the computer, while others, such as USB flash drives, are plug-and-play with all the hardware required to read them built into the device, so only need a driver software to be installed in order to communicate with the device. Some removable media readers/drives are integrated into the computer case, while others are standalone devices that need to be additionally installed or connected.
MultiMediaCard, officially abbreviated as MMC, is a memory card standard used for solid-state storage. Unveiled in 1997 by SanDisk and Siemens, MMC is based on a surface-contact low pin-count serial interface using a single memory stack substrate assembly, and is therefore much smaller than earlier systems based on high pin-count parallel interfaces using traditional surface-mount assembly such as CompactFlash. Both products were initially introduced using SanDisk NOR-based flash technology.
A flash drive is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and usually weighs less than 30 g (1 oz). Since first offered for sale in late 2000, the storage capacities of USB drives range from 8 to 256 gigabytes (GB), 512 GB and 1 terabyte (TB). As of 2023, 2 TB flash drives were the largest currently in production. Some allow up to 100,000 write/erase cycles, depending on the exact type of memory chip used, and are thought to physically last between 10 and 100 years under normal circumstances.
SmartMedia is an obsolete flash memory card standard owned by Toshiba, with capacities ranging from 2 MB to 128 MB. The format mostly saw application in the early 2000s in digital cameras and audio production. SmartMedia memory cards are no longer manufactured.
The xD-Picture Card is an obsolete form of flash memory card, used in digital cameras made by Olympus, Fujifilm, and Kodak during the 2000s. The xD in the xD-Picture Card stands for eXtreme Digital.
Linear Flash is a PC card flash memory format. Linear Flash requires no battery support, unlike somewhat faster SRAM, and features read/write speeds much faster than similar, less expensive ATA-type cards, which include CompactFlash and Memory Stick. Like an SRAM, Linear Flash supports execute in place (XIP) applications in mobile PC and embedded equipment.
The PocketZip is a medium-capacity floppy disk storage system that was made by Iomega in 1999 that uses proprietary, small, very thin, 40 MB disks. Its relation to the original Zip drive and disk is the floppy medium and relatively much higher capacity than standard floppy disks. It was known as the "Clik!" drive until the click of death class action lawsuit regarding mass failures of Iomega's Zip drives. Thenceforth, it was renamed to PocketZip. A 100 MB Pocket Zip drive version had been in the works, was intended to be backwards compatible with the 40 MB disks, but ended up being vaporware and PocketZip itself would be discontinued as well.
A flash cartridge is one of several cartridges containing flash memory that have been developed for use in video game consoles. These cartridges enable homebrew applications and games to be used. Flash cartridges offer a means of storage for keeping the games until a user decides to run a game, which then it is copied to the cartridge's game ROM for the console to run the game as if it were a normal ROM cartridge. The game storage can be in the form of onboard flash memory on the cartridge, although more recent cartridges use external memory cards as storage in place of onboard memory, such as Compact Flash or Secure Digital memory cards. Recent flash cartridges may also use RAM instead of ROM for flashing games to run on the console as a way to offer faster loading times than what is possible on reprogrammable ROM.
In computing, external storage refers to non-volatile (secondary) data storage outside a computer's own internal hardware, and thus can be readily disconnected and accessed elsewhere. Such storage devices may refer to removable media, compact flash drives, portable storage devices, or network-attached storage. Web-based cloud storage is the latest technology for external storage.
Lexar International is a brand of flash memory products manufactured by the Chinese memory company Longsys.
The JEIDA memory card standard is a popular memory card standard at the beginning of memory cards appearing on portable computers. JEIDA cards could be used to expand system memory or as a solid-state storage drive.
This table provides summary of comparison of various flash memory cards, as of 2017.
A memory card reader is a device for accessing the data on a memory card such as a CompactFlash (CF), Secure Digital (SD) or MultiMediaCard (MMC). Most card readers also offer write capability, and together with the card, this can function as a pen drive.
A game backup device, informally called a copier, is a device for backing up ROM data from a video game cartridge to a computer file called a ROM image and playing them back on the official hardware. Recently flash cartridges, especially on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS platforms, only support the latter function; they cannot be used for backing up ROM data. Game backup devices also make it possible to develop homebrew software on video game systems. Game backup devices differ from modchips in that modchips are used in conjunction with systems that use generally available media such as CDs and DVDs, whereas game backup devices are used with systems that use cartridges.
A dongle is a small piece of computer hardware that connects to a port on another device to provide it with additional functionality, or enable a pass-through to such a device that adds functionality.
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