A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...

. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a socket instead of a protruding USB flash drives.

History

The basis for memory card technology is

. It was invented by Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba in 1980 and commercialized by Toshiba in 1987.

PC Card In computing, PC Card is a configuration for computer parallel communication peripheral interface, designed for laptop computers. Originally introduced as PCMCIA, the PC Card standard as well as its successors like CardBus were defined and devel ...

s (PCMCIA) were the first commercial memory card formats (type I cards) to come out, but are now mainly used in industrial applications and to connect I/O devices such as modems. 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. 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,

PDA PDA may refer to: Science and technology * Patron-driven acquisition, a mechanism for libraries to purchase books *Personal digital assistant, a mobile device * Photodiode array, a type of detector * Polydiacetylenes, a family of conducting poly ...

s, and

compact digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile device ...

s drove a trend that left the previous generation of "compact" cards looking big. In 2001, SM alone captured 50% of the digital camera market and CF had captured the professional digital camera market. By 2005 however, SD/MMC 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; this led to the development of the Microdrive,

PocketZip The PocketZip is a medium-capacity floppy disk storage system that was made by Iomega in 1999 that uses proprietary, small, very thin, 40 megabyte, MB Disk storage, disks. Its relation to the original Zip drive, Zip drive and disk is the flopp ...

and Dataplay. All three concepts became obsolete once flash memory prices became lower and their capacities became higher by 2006. 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. Effectively the format war has turned in SD-Card's favor."Format-Krieg entschieden: SD-Card setzt sich durch"
(''"format-war resolved: SD-card prevails"''), Chip-online, 14. January 2010

Data table of selected memory card formats

File:SD Cards.JPG, Secure Digital card (SD) File:MiniSD memory card including adapter.jpg, MiniSD Card with an SD card adapter File:Memory Stick Front and Back.jpg, Memory Stick File:Compactflash-512mb.png, CompactFlash (CF-I) File:Kingston Multi Media Card 32MB front 20040702.jpg,

MultiMediaCard The 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 subs ...

(MMC) File:Smartmedia card closeup.jpg, SmartMedia File:XD card 16M Fujifilm front.png, xD-Picture Card File:Huawei_NM_Card.jpg, NM card (A proprietary memory card format created by Huawei) Electronic contacts compared to nano-sim card to the same scale.

Overview of all memory card types

*PCMCIA ATA Type I Card (PC Card ATA Type I) **PCMCIA Type II, Type III cards *

CompactFlash Card 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. CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the ...

(Type I), CompactFlash High-Speed *CompactFlash Type II, CF+(CF2.0), CF3.0 **Microdrive * CFexpress *MiniCard ( Miniature Card) (max 64 MB / 64

MiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

) *SmartMedia Card (SSFDC) (max 128 MB) (3.3 V,5 V) *xD-Picture Card, xD-Picture Card Type M *Memory Stick, MagicGate Memory Stick (max 128 MB); Memory Stick Select, MagicGate Memory Stick Select ("Select" means: 2x128 MB with A/B switch) *SecureMMC * Secure Digital (SD Card), Secure Digital High-Speed, Secure Digital Plus/Xtra/etc (SD with USB connector) ** miniSD card ** microSD card (aka Transflash, T-Flash, TF) **SDHC **WiFi SD Cards (SD Card With WiFi Card Built in) Powered by Device. (Eye-Fi, WiFi SD, Flash Air) *

Nano Memory Nano Memory (NM) is a proprietary memory card format developed by Huawei in 2018. NM cards are the same size as a nano SIM card, so they can be used in the same slots as nano SIMs. They are smaller than micro SD cards, freeing up space and reduc ...

(NM) card *MU-Flash (Mu-Card) (Mu-Card Alliance of OMIA) *C-Flash * SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module) *

Smart card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...

( ISO/IEC 7810, ISO/IEC 7816 card standards, etc.) *UFC ( USB FlashCard) (uses USB) *FISH Universal Transportable Memory Card Standard (uses USB) *Intelligent Stick (iStick, a USB-based flash memory card with MMS) *

SxS SxS (S-by-S) is a flash memory standard compliant to the Sony and SanDisk-created ExpressCard standard. According to Sandisk and Sony, the cards have transfer rates of 800 Mbit/s and burst transfer rate of up to 2.5 Gbit/s over the ExpressCard's ...

(S-by-S) memory card, a new memory card specification developed by Sandisk and Sony. SxS complies to the ExpressCard industry standard. *Nexflash Winbond Serial Flash Module (SFM) cards, size range 1 MB, 2 MB and 4 MB.

Comparison

Video game consoles

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 wouldn't save progress at all. The

Neo Geo AES The , stylised as NEO•GEO and also written as NEOGEO, is a cartridge-based arcade system board and the fourth generation home video game console released on April 26, 1990 by Japanese game company SNK Corporation. It was the first system in ...

, 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 cabinet An arcade cabinet, also known as an arcade machine or a coin-op cabinet or coin-op machine, is the housing within which an arcade game's electronic hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the Japanese Amusement Ma ...

s, allowing players to migrate saves between home and

arcade system An arcade video game takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. Most arcade video games are coin-operated, housed in an arca ...

s and vice versa. 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 The Sega CD, released as the in most regions outside North America and Brazil, is a CD-ROM accessory for the Sega Genesis produced by Sega as part of the fourth generation of video game consoles. It was released on December 12, 1991, in Japan, ...

. Until the sixth generation of video game consoles, memory cards were based on

proprietary format A proprietary file format is a file format of a company, organization, or individual that contains data that is ordered and stored according to a particular encoding-scheme, designed by the company or organization to be secret, such that the decodi ...

s; later systems have 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 generic USB flash drives or other card formats via a memory card reader to transport game saves and other game information, along with

cloud storage Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which the digital data is stored in logical pools, said to be on "the cloud". The physical storage spans multiple servers (sometimes in multiple locations), and the physical environment is t ...

saving, though 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. File:Neo-Geo-Memory-Card.jpg , Neo Geo 2KiB memory card File:PSX-Memory-Card.jpg ,

PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divisi ...

128 KiB memory card File:PS2-8MB-Mem-Card.jpg ,

PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October 2000, in Europe on 24 November 2000, and in Australia on 3 ...

8 MiB memory card File:Nintendo GameCube memory card.png ,

GameCube The is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 (1996), and predecessor of the Wii ...

512 KiB memory card File:Xbox-360-512MB-MemCard.jpg , Xbox 360 memory card

References