Memory card - Wikipedia

Memory card - Wikipedia
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Not to be confused with
Flash drive
or
Memory module
Miniaturization
is evident in memory card creation; over time, the physical card sizes have become smaller.
Memory card in a digital SLR camera
Electronic data storage device
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
, such as
digital cameras
as well as in many early games consoles such as the
Neo Geo
. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a socket instead of protruding
USB flash drives
Common types of flash memory card include
SD cards
(including microSD),
Sony's Memory Stick
and
CompactFlash
As of 2024
[update]
, SD cards are the most common type of memory cards.
History
edit
The basis for memory card technology is
flash memory
It was invented by
Fujio Masuoka
at
Toshiba
in 1980
and commercialized by Toshiba in 1987.
The development of memory cards was driven in the 1980s by the need for an alternative to floppy disk drives that had lower power consumption, had less weight and occupied less volume in laptops. Some were also marketed as a lower cost alternative to
ROM cartridges
Several competing and incompatible memory card formats were developed by several vendors,
such as for example the
Bee Card
Astron SoftCard
10
Sega Cards,
NEC UltraLite
memory cards,
11
12
and the Mitsubishi Melcard which came in variants using 60 and 50 connector pins. The
Sega Card
was developed as a cheaper alternative to game cartridges.
13
Some memory cards were used for memory expansion in laptops.
14
15
16
JEIDA, the
Japan Electronic Industry Development Association
, began to work on a standard for memory cards in 1985, and developed the
JEIDA memory card
in 1986.
17
The
Personal Computer Memory Card International Association
(PCMCIA) was an industry association created in 1989 to promote a standard for memory cards in PCs, and worked closely with JEIDA, adopting their 68 pin connector design. The specification for PCMCIA type I cards, later renamed
PC Cards
, was first released in 1990, and unified the JEIDA memory card standard with the PC Card standard.
16
18
This format later included support for other devices besides memory cards.
18
PC Card was among the first commercial memory card formats to come out, but is mainly used in industrial applications and to connect I/O devices such as
modems
Some early memory cards used
SRAM
as a storage medium, which required a lithium battery to keep the contents in the SRAM. These cards were faster than their flash counterparts. Some of the first PCMCIA cards had capacities of 1 to 5 MB and cost US$100 per MB.
19
Other early cards such as the Bee Card contained non-modifiable
ROM
Write once read many
EPROM
or rewriteable
EEPROM
memory.
20
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, as it used flash memory.
21
19
In 1994, 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,
PDAs
, and
compact digital cameras
drove a trend that left the previous generation of "compact" cards looking big. In 2000 the SD card was announced. SD was envisioned as a single memory card format for several kinds of electronic devices, that could also function as an expansion slot for adding new capabilities for a device.
22
In 2001, SmartMedia alone captured 50% of the digital camera market and CF had captured the professional digital camera market.
However, by 2005, SD and similar MMC cards 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.
citation needed
Initially memory cards were expensive, costing US$3 per megabyte of capacity in 2001;
23
this led to the development of miniaturized rotating disk memory devices such as the
Microdrive
PocketZip
and
Dataplay
. The Microdrive had higher capacities than memory cards at the time. All three concepts became obsolete once flash memory prices became lower and their capacities became higher by 2006.
21
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 beginning in 2010.
24
Effectively, the
format war
has turned in SD-Card's favor.
25
26
27
See also:
SD card § Markets
Data table of selected memory card formats
edit
This section
needs expansion
with: info on which of these are dead. You can help by
adding missing information
December 2021
Name
Abbreviation
Form factor (mm)
DRM
PC Card
PCMCIA
85.6 × 54 × 3.3
No
CompactFlash
CF-I
43 × 36 × 3.3
No
CompactFlash
II
CF-II
43 × 36 × 5.5
No
CFexpress
Type A
CFA
20 × 28 × 2.8
Unknown
CFexpress
Type B
CFX
38.5 × 29.8 × 3.8
Unknown
CFexpress
Type C
54 × 74 × 4.8
Unknown
SmartMedia
SM/ SMC
45 × 37 × 0.76
ID
Memory Stick
MS
50.0 × 21.5 × 2.8
MagicGate
Memory Stick
Duo
MSD
31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6
MagicGate
Memory Stick
Pro Duo
MSPD
31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6
MagicGate
Memory Stick
Pro-HG Duo
MSPDX
31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6
MagicGate
Memory Stick
Micro M2
M2
15.0 × 12.5 × 1.2
MagicGate
Miniature Card
37 × 45 × 3.5
No
Multimedia Card
MMC
32 × 24 × 1.5
No
Reduced Size Multimedia Card
RS-MMC
16 × 24 × 1.5
No
MMCmicro Card
MMCmicro
12 × 14 × 1.1
No
Nintendo Switch
NS
31 × 21 × 3
P2 card
P2
85.6 × 54 × 3.3
No
PS Vita
PSV
30 x 22 x 2
SD card
SD
32 × 24 × 2.1
CPRM
SxS
SxS
75 × 34 × 5
No
Universal Flash Storage
UFS
Unknown
microSD card
microSD
15 × 11 × 0.7
CPRM
xD-Picture Card
xD
20 × 25 × 1.7
No
Intelligent Stick
iStick
24 × 18 × 2.8
No
Serial Flash Module
SFM
45 × 15
No
μ card
μcard
32 × 24 × 1
Unknown
NT Card
NT NT+
44 × 24 × 2.5
No
XQD card
XQD
38.5 × 29.8 × 3.8
Unknown
Nano Memory
card
NM Card
12.3 × 8.8 × 0.7
Unknown
Secure Digital card
(SD)
MiniSD card
with an SD card adapter
Memory Stick
CompactFlash
(CF-I)
MultiMediaCard
(MMC)
SmartMedia
xD-Picture Card
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
edit
Main article:
Comparison of memory cards
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does not
cite
any
sources
Please help
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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
) (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, 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 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.
28
Nexflash Winbond Serial Flash Module (SFM) cards, size range 1
MB
, 2 MB and 4 MB.
Comparison
edit
Standard
SD
UFS Card
CFast
XQD
CFexpress
Version
3.0
4.0
6.0
7.0
29
8.0
1.0
2.0
1.0
2.0
1.0
2.0
1.0
2.0
4.0
Launched
2010 Q2
2011 Q1
2017 Q1
2018 Q2
2020 Q1
2016 Q2
2008 Q3
2012 Q3
2011 Q4
2014 Q1
2017 Q2
2019 Q1
2023 Q3
Bus
UHS-I
UHS-II
UHS-III
PCIe 3.0 x1
PCIe 4.0 x2
UFS 2.0
UFS 3.0
SATA-300
SATA-600
PCIe 2.0 x1
PCIe 2.0 x2
PCIe 3.0 x2
PCIe 3.0 x1/x2/x4
PCIe 4.0 x1/x2/x4
Speed
(full-duplex)
104 MB/s
156 MB/s
624 MB/s
985 MB/s
3938 MB/s
600 MB/s
1200 MB/s
300 MB/s
600 MB/s
500 MB/s
1000 MB/s
1970 MB/s
up to 4 GB/s
up to 8 GB/s
NVMe
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Size
2TB
2TB
128TB
128TB
1.152921504606846976EB
144.115PB
75.5578637ZB
Video game consoles
edit
This section
needs additional citations for
verification
Please help
improve this article
by
adding citations to reliable sources
in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
December 2011
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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 would not 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.
30
31
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 used established industry formats for memory cards, such as
FAT32
Home consoles commonly use
hard disk drive
storage for saved games and allow the use of
USB flash drives
or other card formats via a
memory card reader
to transport game saves and other game information. Though some consoles have implemented
cloud storage
saving, 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.
Neo Geo
2 KiB memory card
PlayStation
128 KiB memory card
Dreamcast
VMU
) 128 KiB memory card
GameCube
512 KiB memory card
Xbox 360
memory card
See also
edit
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Memory card
Comparison of memory cards
Hot swapping
Memory card reader
ROM cartridge
References
edit
Sahoo, Reeta; Sahoo, Gagan.
Infomatic Practices
. New Saraswati House India Pvt Ltd.
ISBN
978-93-5199-433-6
Williams, Matt (April 27, 2022).
"A Complete Guide to Memory Cards"
PetaPixel
. Retrieved
April 27,
2025
Micheloni, Rino; Crippa, Luca; Marelli, Alessia (2010).
Inside NAND Flash Memories
. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 2.
ISBN
9789048194315
Fulford, Benjamin (24 June 2002).
"Unsung Hero"
Forbes
Archived
from the original on 3 March 2008
. Retrieved
18 March
2008
US 4531203
Fujio Masuoka
"1987: Toshiba Launches NAND Flash"
eWeek
. April 11, 2012
. Retrieved
June 20,
2019
"1971: Reusable Semiconductor ROM Introduced"
Computer History Museum
. Retrieved
June 19,
2019
"What MSX? (GB)"
. 1985 – via Internet Archive.
"In The Cards"
InfoWorld
. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. February 5, 1990. p. 25 – via Google Books.
"MSX Computing (GB) : Haymarket Publishing : Free Download, Borrow, And Streaming : Internet Archive"
. 1984.
Machrone, Bill (November 15, 1988).
"NEC's 4.4-Pound UltraLite Sets a New Standard for Portable Machines"
PC Magazine
. Ziff Davis, Inc. pp. 33, 35.
Dryden, Patrick (October 30, 1989).
"Vendors Move to Set IC Card Standards"
InfoWorld
. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. p. 21 – via Google Books.
Pettus, Sam; Munoz, David; Williams, Kevin; Barroso, Ivan (December 20, 2013).
Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA: Enhanced Edition
. Smashwords Edition.
ISBN
978-1-311-08082-0
– via Google Books.
"VLSI MOS MEMORY RAM/ROM & MEMORY CARDS"
(PDF)
bitsavers.org
. Mitsubishi Electronics Device Group. January 1991
. Retrieved
October 29,
2025
Rosch, Winn (January 26, 1993).
"PCMCIA: The Expansion System of the Future"
PC Magazine
. Ziff Davis, Inc. p. 321 – via Google Books.
Anderson, Don (January 25, 1995).
PCMCIA System Architecture: 16-Bit PC Cards
. Addison-Wesley Professional.
ISBN
978-0-201-40991-8
– via Google Books.
"PC カード規格概要解説"
[PC Card Standards Overview]
(PDF)
(in Japanese). Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on February 3, 2024.
Rist, Oliver (December 21, 1993).
"PCMCIA: An Inside Look"
PC Magazine
. Ziff Davis, Inc. p. 264 – via Google Books.
Stam, Nick (December 21, 1993).
"PCMCIA's System Architecture"
PC Magazine
. Ziff Davis, Inc. p. 270 – via Google Books.
"What MSX? (GB)"
. 1984.
"25 Years of CompactFlash: A Look Back at the Pioneering Format"
PCMAG
Corporation, Bonnier (May 27, 2000).
"Popular Science"
. Bonnier Corporation – via Google Books.
"PCWorld.com – DataPlay Shows Breakthrough in Storage Media"
. June 8, 2001. Archived from
the original
on June 8, 2001.
Grunin, Lori (January 6, 2010).
"Sony Does SD; Panasonic Intros First SDXC Cards | 2010 CES — CNET Blogs"
. Ces.cnet.com. Archived from
the original
on March 24, 2010
. Retrieved
January 7,
2013
"Format-Krieg entschieden: SD-Card setzt sich durch"
"format-war resolved: SD-card prevails"
), Chip-online, 14. January 2010
"Camera trends come into focus for 2010"
, NBC News, 13. January.2010
"As much as the storage-format war cleared up a bit with Sony announcing that it would support SD and SDHC cards ..."
"FEATURE: Playing Your Cards Right at Retail"
Archived
2013-06-17 at the
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, Peter K. Burian, 4. June 2010.
"Some industry observers have suggested that this development signals an end to the 'format war,' ..."
"SanDisk and Sony Announce SxS Memory Card: Digital Photography Review"
. Dpreview.com
. Retrieved
January 7,
2013
Pinto, Yosi.
"SD + PCIe/NVMe Card New Innovations in SD Cards Lead the Way to Mobile Everything"
(PDF)
Flash Memory Summit
"The Official NEO-GEO Memory Card FAQ by Billy Pitt"
NeoGeoProtos.com
. Retrieved
February 10,
2017
"This Fall Everything Turns To Gold With Neo-Geo: The Player's Gold Card Keeps Them Coming Back For More"
RePlay
. Vol. 16, no. 2. November 1990. pp.
26–
7.
Memory cards
Main articles
Memory card reader
Comparison of memory cards
Types
CompactFlash
(CF, CFast,
CFexpress
Express Card
JEIDA
MultiMediaCard
(MMC)
Memory Stick
(MS, MS-PRO, MS-PRO HG, MS-XC)
miCard
Microdrive
(MD)
MiniCard
Nano Memory
(NM)
P2
MicroP2
PC Card
(PCMCIA, CardBus, CardBay)
Secure Digital
(SDSC, SDHC, SDXC)
SmartMedia
(SM)
SxS
Universal Flash Storage
(UFS)
xD-Picture
XQD
Basic
computer
components
Input devices
Pointing devices
Graphics tablet
Game controller
Light pen
Mouse
Optical
Optical trackpad
Pointing stick
Touchpad
Touchscreen
Trackball
Other
Keyboard
Image scanner
Graphics card
GPU
Microphone
Refreshable braille display
Sound card
Sound chip
Webcam
Softcam
Output devices
Monitor
Screen
Refreshable braille display
Printer
Plotter
Speakers
Sound card
Graphics card
Removable
data storage
Disk pack
Floppy disk
Optical disc
CD
DVD
Blu-ray
Flash memory
Memory card
USB flash drive
Computer case
Central processing unit
Microprocessor
Motherboard
Memory
RAM
BIOS
Data storage
HDD
SSD
SATA
NVMe
SSHD
Power supply
SMPS
MOSFET
Power MOSFET
VRM
Network interface controller
Fax modem
Expansion card
Ports
Current
Ethernet
USB
Thunderbolt
Analog audio jack
DisplayPort
HDMI
Obsolete
FireWire
(IEEE 1394)
Parallel port
Serial port
Game port
PS/2 port
eSATA
DVI
VGA
Related
History of computing hardware
History of computing hardware (1960s–present)
List of pioneers in computer science
Authority control databases
GND
Retrieved from "
Categories
1990s in computing
Computer-related introductions in 1987
Solid-state computer storage media
Video game storage media
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