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 u ...

. 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 drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since fir ...

History

The basis for memory card technology is

. 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 flash ...

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems ...

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

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more c ...

s. In 1992,

SanDisk SanDisk is a brand for flash memory products, including memory cards and readers, USB flash drives, solid-state drives, and digital audio players, manufactured and marketed by Western Digital. The original company, SanDisk Corporation was acquire ...

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 ...

and later

SmartMedia 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 ar ...

and Miniature Card. The desire for smaller cards for cell-phones, PDAs, 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 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 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 A format war is a competition between similar but mutually incompatible technical standards that compete for the same market, such as for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political a ...

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 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 SanDi ...

(SD) File:MiniSD memory card including adapter.jpg, MiniSD Card with an SD card adapter File:Memory Stick Front and Back.jpg,

Memory Stick 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 an ...

File:Compactflash-512mb.png,

(CF-I) File:Kingston Multi Media Card 32MB front 20040702.jpg, MultiMediaCard (MMC) File:Smartmedia card closeup.jpg,

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 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 Sa ...

(SD Card), Secure Digital High-Speed, Secure Digital Plus/Xtra/etc (SD with USB connector) ** miniSD card **

microSD card 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 SanDisk ...

(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 7810 ''Identification cards — Physical characteristics'' is an international standard that defines the physical characteristics for identification cards. The characteristics specified include: * Physical dimensions * Resistance ...

, 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 ExpressCar ...

(S-by-S) memory card, a new memory card specification developed by

Sandisk SanDisk is a brand for flash memory products, including memory cards and readers, USB flash drives, solid-state drives, and digital audio players, manufactured and marketed by Western Digital. The original company, SanDisk Corporation was acquire ...

and

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

. 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 console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...

s used memory cards to hold

saved game A saved game (also called a game save, savegame, savefile, save point, or simply save) is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. From the earliest games in the 1970s onward, game platform hard ...

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 cabinets, 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 disc In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data (bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surfaces. ...

s for storing the game program, beginning with systems such as the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega-CD. Until the

sixth generation of video game consoles In the history of video games, the sixth generation era (sometimes called the 128-bit era; see #Bits and system power, "bits and system power" below) is the era of personal computer game, computer and video games, video game consoles, and handhel ...

, 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 decod ...

s; later systems have used established industry formats for memory cards, such as

FAT32 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by ...

. Home consoles now commonly use

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magn ...

storage for saved games and allow the use of generic

s 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 ty ...

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 Neo Geo is a family of video game hardware developed by SNK. On the market from 1990 to 2004, the brand originated with the release of an arcade system, the Neo Geo MVS and its home console counterpart, the Neo Geo AES. The Neo Geo MVS was ...

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 di ...

128 KiB memory card File:PS2-8MB-Mem-Card.jpg , PlayStation 2 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 W ...

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

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...

memory card

References