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 drive Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply ( interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A bro ...

History

The basis for memory card technology is flash memory. It was invented by Fujio Masuoka at

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 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

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 Modulation#Digital modulati ...

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 acquir ...

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 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 a ...

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 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 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 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) File:MiniSD memory card including adapter.jpg,

MiniSD 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 SanDis ...

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 The xD-Picture Card is an obsolete form of flash memory card, used in digital cameras made by Olympus and Fujifilm during the 2000s. The xD in the xD-Picture Card stands for eXtreme Digital. xD cards were manufactured with capacities of 16&nb ...

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 CFexpress is a standard for removable media cards proposed by the CompactFlash Association (CFA). The standard uses PCIe 3.0 interface with 1 to 4 lanes where 1 GB/s data can be provided per lane. NVM Express is also supported to provide low overh ...

*MiniCard ( Miniature Card) (max 64 MB / 64 MiB) *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 SanD ...

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

miniSD 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 SanDis ...

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 SanDis ...

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

ISO/IEC 7816 ISO/IEC 7816 is an international standard related to electronic identification cards with contacts, especially smart cards, and more recently, contactless mobile devices, managed jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ...

card standards, etc.) *UFC (

USB FlashCard Lexar Media, Inc. is a Chinese brand of flash memory products manufactured by the Chinese company Longsys. The Lexar "JumpDrive" trademark was often used synonymously with the term USB flash drives when the technology was first adopted. Histo ...

) (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 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 acquir ...

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 professiona ...

. 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 hardw ...

data.

Cartridge Cartridge may refer to: Objects * Cartridge (firearms), a type of modern ammunition * ROM cartridge, a removable component in an electronic device * Cartridge (respirator), a type of filter used in respirators Other uses * Cartridge (surname), a ...

-based systems primarily used battery-backed volatile

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

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 is a Japanese video game hardware and software company. It is the successor to the company Shin Nihon Kikaku and presently owns the SNK video game brand and the Neo Geo video game platform. SNK's predecessor Shin Nihon Kikaku was founded in 1978 ...

, was the first video game console able to use a memory card. AES memory cards were also compatible with

Neo Geo MVS 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 ...

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 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 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, thou ...

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" below) is the era of computer and video games, video game consoles, and handheld gaming devices available at the turn of the ...

, memory cards were based on proprietary formats; 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 magne ...

storage for saved games and allow the use of generic

s or other card formats via a

memory card reader 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 ...

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 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 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 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