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. 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
flash memory. It was invented by
Fujio Masuoka
is a Japanese engineer, who has worked for Toshiba and Tohoku University, and is currently chief technical officer (CTO) of Unisantis Electronics. He is best known as the inventor of flash memory, including the development of both the NOR fla ...
at
Toshiba in 1980 and commercialized by Toshiba in 1987.
PC Cards (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
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 e ...
and later
SmartMedia and
Miniature Card
The Miniature Card or MiniCard is a flash or SRAM memory card standard first promoted by Intel in 1995. The card was backed by Advanced Micro Devices, Fujitsu and Sharp Electronics. They are no longer manufactured. The Miniature Card Implementer ...
. 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 po ...
s, and
compact digital cameras 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
Niche may refer to:
Science
*Developmental niche, a concept for understanding the cultural context of child development
* Ecological niche, a term describing the relational position of an organism's species
*Niche differentiation, in ecology, the ...
, 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
The Microdrive is a registered trademark for miniature, 1-inch hard disks produced by IBM and Hitachi. These rotational media storage devices were designed to fit in CompactFlash (CF) Type II slots. The release of similar drives by other ma ...
,
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 MB disks. Its relation to the original Zip drive and disk is the floppy medium and relatively much hig ...
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"](_blank)
(''"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
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 e ...
(CF-I)
File:Kingston Multi Media Card 32MB front 20040702.jpg, MultiMediaCard (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 (Type I), CompactFlash High-Speed
*CompactFlash Type II, CF+(CF2.0), CF3.0
**Microdrive
*
CFexpress
*MiniCard (
Miniature Card
The Miniature Card or MiniCard is a flash or SRAM memory card standard first promoted by Intel in 1995. The card was backed by Advanced Micro Devices, Fujitsu and Sharp Electronics. They are no longer manufactured. The Miniature Card Implementer ...
) (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
Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices.
The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between SanDis ...
(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 (
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 (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, 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.
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
The TurboGrafx-16, known as the outside North America, is a home video game console designed by Hudson Soft and sold by NEC Home Electronics. It was the first console marketed in the fourth generation, commonly known as the 16-bit era, thoug ...
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 formats; 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 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 128 KiB memory card
File:PS2-8MB-Mem-Card.jpg , PlayStation 2 8 MiB memory card
File:Nintendo GameCube memory card.png , GameCube 512 KiB memory card
File:Xbox-360-512MB-MemCard.jpg , Xbox 360 memory card
See also
*
Comparison of memory cards
This table provides summary of comparison of various flash memory cards, .
Common information
:''unless otherwise indicated, all images to scale''
Physical details
Note that a memory card's dimensions are determined while holding the card w ...
*
Hot swapping
*
Memory card reader
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Memory Card
1990s in computing
Computer-related introductions in the 1990s
*Memory card
Video game storage media