Memory card

Miniaturization is evident in memory card creation; over time, the physical card sizes grow smaller.

A 32GB SanDisk memory card with adapter

A memory card or flash card is an electronic flash memory data storage device used for storing digital information. These are commonly used in portable electronic devices, such as digital cameras, mobile phones, laptop computers, tablets, MP3 players and video game consoles.

History

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. Since 1994, a number of memory card formats smaller than the PC Card arrived, the first one was CompactFlash 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 digital cameras SmartMedia and CompactFlash had been very successful. 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 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.

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.

Data table of selected memory card formats

Name	Abbreviation	Form factor	DRM
PC Card	PCMCIA	85.6 × 54 × 3.3 mm	No
CompactFlash I	CF-I	43 × 36 × 3.3 mm	No
CompactFlash II	CF-II	43 × 36 × 5.5 mm	No
SmartMedia	SM / SMC	45 × 37 × 0.76 mm	No
Memory Stick	MS	50.0 × 21.5 × 2.8 mm	MagicGate
Memory Stick Duo	MSD	31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6 mm	MagicGate
Memory Stick PRO Duo	MSPD	31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6 mm	MagicGate
Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo	MSPDX	31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6 mm	MagicGate
Memory Stick Micro M2	M2	15.0 × 12.5 × 1.2 mm	MagicGate
Miniature Card		37 × 45 × 3.5 mm	No
Multimedia Card	MMC	32 × 24 × 1.5 mm	No
Reduced Size Multimedia Card	RS-MMC	16 × 24 × 1.5 mm	No
MMCmicro Card	MMCmicro	12 × 14 × 1.1 mm	No
P2 card	P2		No
Secure Digital card	SD	32 × 24 × 2.1 mm	CPRM
SxS	SxS		No
Universal Flash Storage	UFS		Unknown
miniSD card	miniSD	21.5 × 20 × 1.4 mm	CPRM
microSD card	microSD	15 × 11 × 0.7 mm	CPRM
xD-Picture Card	xD	20 × 25 × 1.7 mm	No
Intelligent Stick	iStick	24 × 18 × 2.8 mm	No
Serial Flash Module	SFM	45 × 15 mm	No
µ card	µcard	32 × 24 × 1 mm	Unknown
NT Card	NT NT+	44 × 24 × 2.5 mm	No
XQD card	XQD	38.5 × 29.8 × 3.8 mm	Unknown

• 
  Secure Digital card (SD)
• 
  MiniSD Card with an SD card adapter
• 
  CompactFlash (CF-I)
• 
  Memory Stick
• 
  MultiMediaCard (MMC)
• 
  SmartMedia
• 
  xD-Picture Card

Overview of all memory card types

Main article: Comparison of memory cards

• 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
• 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 (SD Card), Secure Digital High-Speed, Secure Digital Plus/Xtra/etc (SD with USB connector)
  • miniSD card
  • microSD card (aka Transflash, T-Flash)
  • SDHC
  • WiFi SD Cards (SD Card With WiFi Card Built in) Powered by Device. (Eye-Fi, WiFi SD, Flash Air)
• 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.

Video game consoles

PlayStation memory card

Video game consoles use 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. 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 and Sega-CD.

Until the sixth generation of video game consoles, memory cards were based on proprietary formats; later systems have used established industry hardware 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.

See also

• Comparison of memory cards
• Hot swapping