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42-556: Common types of flash memory card include SD cards (including microSD), Sony's Memory Stick and CompactFlash . As of 2024, SD cards are the most common type of memory cards. 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

84-716: 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 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. 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. Effectively

126-677: A 32 GB SDHC card and a 64 GB SDXC card. Later that year, Lexar released the first 256 GB SDXC card, based on 20 nm NAND flash technology. In February 2014, SanDisk introduced the first 128 GB microSDXC card, which was followed by a 200 GB microSDXC card in March 2015. September 2014 saw SanDisk announce the first 512 GB SDXC card. Samsung announced the world's first EVO Plus 256 GB microSDXC card in May 2016, and in September 2016 Western Digital (SanDisk) announced that

168-468: A 64 GB microSDXC card. Kingmax released a comparable product in 2011. In April 2012, Panasonic introduced MicroP2 card format for professional video applications. The cards are essentially full-size SDHC or SDXC UHS-II cards, rated at UHS Speed Class U1. An adapter allows MicroP2 cards to work in current P2 card equipment. Panasonic MicroP2 cards shipped in March 2013 and were the first UHS-II compliant products on market; initial offer includes

210-636: A USB card reader from Panasonic, and an integrated SDXC card reader from JMicron. The earliest laptops to integrate SDXC card readers relied on a USB 2.0 bus, which does not have the bandwidth to support SDXC at full speed. In early 2010, commercial SDXC cards appeared from Toshiba (64 GB), Panasonic (64 GB and 48 GB), and SanDisk (64 GB). In early 2011, Centon Electronics, Inc. (64 GB and 128 GB) and Lexar (128 GB) began shipping SDXC cards rated at Speed Class 10. Pretec offered cards from 8 GB to 128 GB rated at Speed Class 16. In September 2011, SanDisk released

252-448: A device. 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

294-643: 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. Other early cards such as the Bee Card contained non-modifiable ROM , Write once read many EPROM or rewriteable EEPROM memory. 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. In 1994, memory card formats smaller than

336-569: 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 SoftCards, Sega Cards, NEC UltraLite memory cards, 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. Some memory cards were used for memory expansion in laptops. JEIDA,

378-506: A non-profit organization to create and promote SD Card standards. As of 2023 , the SDA has approximately 1,000 member companies. It uses several SD-3C-owned trademarked logos to enforce compliance with its specifications and denote compatibility. In 1999, SanDisk , Panasonic (Matsushita) and Toshiba agreed to develop and market the Secure Digital (SD) memory card. The card was derived from

420-727: A prototype of the first 1 TB SDXC card would be demonstrated at Photokina . In August 2017, SanDisk launched a 400 GB microSDXC card. In January 2018, Integral Memory unveiled its 512 GB microSDXC card. In May 2018, PNY launched a 512 GB microSDXC card. In June 2018 Kingston announced its Canvas series of microSD cards which were capable of capacities up to 512 GB, in three variations, Select, Go! and React. In February 2019, Micron and SanDisk unveiled their microSDXC cards of 1 TB capacity. The Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) format supports cards up to 128 TB and offers speeds up to 985 MB/s. In April 2024, Western Digital (SanDisk) revealed

462-560: A second row of pins. Each lane is capable of transferring up to 156 MB/s. In full-duplex mode, one lane is used for Transmit while the other is used for Receive. In half-duplex mode both lanes are used for the same direction of data transfer allowing a double data rate at the same clock speed. In addition to enabling higher data rates, the UHS-II interface allows for lower interface power consumption, lower I/O voltage and lower electromagnetic interference (EMI). Format war A format war

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504-478: A small-form-factor extension to the SD card standard. While the new cards were designed for mobile phones, they were usually packaged with a miniSD adapter that provided compatibility with a standard SD memory card slot. MicroSD form-factor memory cards were introduced in 2004 by SanDisk at CeBIT and originally called T-Flash, and later TransFlash, commonly abbreviated to "TF". T-Flash was renamed microSD in 2005 when it

546-516: Is a proprietary , non-volatile , flash memory card format the SD Association (SDA) developed for use in portable devices. Because of their small physical dimensions, SD cards became widely used in many consumer electronic devices, such as digital cameras , camcorders , video game consoles , mobile phones , action cameras such as the GoPro Hero series, and camera drones . The standard

588-561: 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 and financial influence on content publishers by the developers of the technologies. Developing companies may be characterized as engaging in a format war if they actively oppose or avoid interoperable open-industry technical standards in favor of their own. A format war emergence can be explained because each vendor

630-458: Is not proprietary anymore, as Lexar has the 1066x running at 160 MB/s read and 120 MB/s write via UHS 1, and Kingston also has their Canvas Go! Plus, also running at 170 MB/s). Version 4.0, introduced in June 2011, allows speeds of 156 MB/s to 312 MB/s over the four-lane (two differential lanes) UHS-II bus, which requires an additional row of physical pins. Version 5.0

672-426: Is the most relevant for storing and retrieving large files (relative to block sizes internal to the flash memory ), such as images and multimedia. Small data (such as file names, sizes and timestamps) falls under the much lower speed limit of random access , which can be the limiting factor in some use cases. With early SD cards, a few card manufacturers specified the speed as a "times" ("×") rating, which compared

714-711: The FAT32 file system. Version 2.0 also introduces a high-speed bus mode for both SDSC and SDHC cards, which doubles the original Standard Speed clock to produce 25  MB/s . SDHC host devices are required to accept older SD cards. However, older host devices do not recognize SDHC or SDXC memory cards, although some devices can do so through a firmware upgrade. Older Windows operating systems released before Windows 7 require patches or service packs to support access to SDHC cards. The Secure Digital eXtended Capacity (SDXC) format, announced in January 2009 and defined in version 3.01 of

756-643: 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. 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 ,

798-593: The MultiMediaCard (MMC) and provided digital rights management (DRM) based on the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) standard and a high memory density ("data/bits per physical space"), i.e. a large quantity of data could be stored in a small physical space. SD was designed to compete with the Memory Stick , a flash storage format with DRM Sony had released the year before. Toshiba hoped

840-538: The SD Association (SDA) to promote SD cards. The SD Association, which was headquartered in San Ramon, California , United States, then had 30 member companies and product manufacturers that made interoperable memory cards and devices. Early samples of the SD card became available in the first quarter of 2000, and production quantities of 32 and 64 megabyte (MB) cards became available three months later. The first 64 MB cards were offered for sale for 200 USD. SD

882-472: The format war has turned in SD-Card's favor. (full-duplex) 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 ,

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924-710: 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. SD card Secure Digital , officially abbreviated as SD ,

966-515: 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

1008-457: The SD card logo, and report this capability to the host device. Use of UHS-I requires that the host device command the card to drop from 3.3-volt to 1.8-volt operation over the I/O interface pins and select the four-bit transfer mode, while UHS-II requires 0.4-volt operation. The higher speed rates of UHS-II and III are achieved by using two-lane 0.4 V low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) on

1050-509: The SD card’s DRM would encourage music suppliers concerned about piracy to use SD cards. The trademarked SD logo was originally developed for the Super Density Disc , which was the unsuccessful Toshiba entry in the DVD format war. For this reason, the letter "D" is styled to resemble an optical disc. At the 2000 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the three companies announced the creation of

1092-538: The SD specification, supports cards up to 2 TB, compared to a limit of 32 GB for SDHC cards in the SD 2.0 specification. SDXC adopts Microsoft's exFAT file system as a mandatory feature. Version 3.01 also introduced the Ultra High Speed (UHS) bus for both SDHC and SDXC cards, with interface speeds from 50 MB/s to 104 MB/s for four-bit UHS-I bus. (this number has since been exceeded with SanDisk proprietary technology for 170 MB/s read, which

1134-493: The SD specification, supports cards with capacities up to 32 GB. The SDHC trademark is licensed to ensure compatibility. SDHC cards are physically and electrically identical to standard-capacity SD cards (SDSC). The major compatibility issues between SDHC and SDSC cards are the redefinition of the Card-Specific Data (CSD) register in version 2.0 (see below ), and the fact that SDHC cards are shipped preformatted with

1176-662: The SD:XC standard, such as the Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II mobile phones, to expand their available storage to several hundreds of gigabytes . In January 2009, the SDA announced the SDXC family, which supports cards up to 2 TB and speeds up to 300 MB/s. SDXC cards are formatted with the exFAT file system by default. SDXC was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2009 (January 7–10). At

1218-468: The average speed of reading data to that of the original CD-ROM drive. This was superseded by the Speed Class Rating , which guarantees a minimum rate at which data can be written to the card. The newer families of SD card improve card speed by increasing the bus rate (the frequency of the clock signal that strobes information into and out of the card). Whatever the bus rate, the card can signal to

1260-482: The change of file system, SDXC cards are mostly backward compatible with SDHC readers, and many SDHC host devices can use SDXC cards if they are first reformatted to the FAT32 file system. The SD Association provides a formatting utility for Windows and Mac OS X that checks and formats SD, SDHC, SDXC and SDUC cards. SD card speed is customarily rated by its sequential read or write speed. The sequential performance aspect

1302-412: The host device. Devices that support miniSDHC work with miniSD and miniSDHC, but devices without specific support for miniSDHC work only with the older miniSD card. Since 2008, miniSD cards are no longer produced, due to market domination of the even smaller microSD cards. The storage density of memory cards increased significantly throughout the 2010s, allowing the earliest devices to offer support for

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1344-495: The host that it is "busy" until a read or a write operation is complete. Compliance with a higher speed rating is a guarantee that the card limits its use of the "busy" indication. SD cards will read and write at speeds of 12.5 MB/s. High-Speed Mode (25 MB/s) was introduced to support digital cameras with 1.10 spec version. The Ultra High Speed (UHS) bus is available on some SDHC and SDXC cards. Cards that comply with UHS show Roman numerals 'I', 'II' or 'III' next to

1386-506: The same show, SanDisk and Sony also announced a comparable Memory Stick XC variant with the same 2 TB maximum as SDXC, and Panasonic announced plans to produce 64 GB SDXC cards. On March 6, Pretec introduced the first SDXC card, a 32 GB card with a read/write speed of 400 Mbit/s. But only early in 2010 did compatible host devices come onto the market, including Sony 's Handycam HDR-CX55V camcorder , Canon 's EOS 550D (also known as Rebel T2i) Digital SLR camera,

1428-402: The spec and allowed the inclusion of an exFAT driver. Users of older kernels or BSD can manually install third-party implementations of exFAT (as a FUSE module) in order to be able to mount exFAT-formatted volumes. However, SDXC cards can be reformatted to use any file system (such as ext4 , UFS , VFAT or NTFS ), alleviating the restrictions associated with exFAT availability. Except for

1470-545: The world's first 4 TB SD card at NAB 2024 , which will make use of the SDUC format. It is set to release in 2025. Secure Digital includes five card families available in three form factors . The five families are the original standard capacity (SDSC), high capacity (SDHC), extended capacity ( SDXC ), ultra capacity ( SDUC ) and SDIO , which combines input/output functions with data storage. The second-generation Secure Digital (SDSC or Secure Digital Standard Capacity) card

1512-471: Was adopted by the SDA. TransFlash and microSD cards are functionally identical, allowing either to operate in devices made for the other. A passive adapter allows the use of microSD and TransFlash cards in SD card slots. In September 2006, SanDisk announced the 4 GB miniSDHC. Like the SD and SDHC, the miniSDHC card has the same form factor as the older miniSD card but the HC card requires HC support built into

1554-1129: Was announced in February 2016 at CP+ 2016, and added "Video Speed Class" ratings for UHS cards to handle higher resolution video formats like 8K . The new ratings define a minimal write speed of 90 MB/s. The Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) format, described in the SD 7.0 specification, and announced in June 2018, supports cards up to 128 TB and offers speeds up to 985 MB/s, regardless of form factor, either micro or full size, or interface type including UHS-I, UHS-II, UHS-III or SD Express. The SD Express interface can also be used with SDHC and SDXC cards. SDXC and SDUC cards are required to be formatted using exFAT , but many operating systems will support others. Windows Vista (SP1) and later and OS X (10.6.5 and later) have native support for exFAT. (Windows XP and Server 2003 can support exFAT via an optional update from Microsoft.) Most BSD and Linux distributions did not have exFAT support for legal reasons, though in Linux kernel 5.4 Microsoft open-sourced

1596-489: Was developed to improve on the MultiMediaCard (MMC) standard, which continued to evolve, but in a different direction. Secure Digital changed the MMC design in several ways: Full-size SD cards do not fit into the slimmer MMC slots, and other issues also affect the ability to use one format in a host device designed for the other. The Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) format, announced in January 2006 and defined in version 2.0 of

1638-401: 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. The first 256 MB and 512 MB SD cards were announced in 2001. At March 2003 CeBIT , SanDisk Corporation introduced, announced and demonstrated the miniSD form factor. The SDA adopted the miniSD card in 2003 as

1680-457: Was first released in 1990, and unified the JEIDA memory card standard with the PC Card standard. This format later included support for other devices besides memory cards. 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

1722-464: Was introduced in August 1999 by SanDisk , Panasonic (Matsushita) and Toshiba as an improvement on MultiMediaCards (MMCs). SDs have become an industry standard. The three companies formed SD-3C, LLC, a company that licenses and enforces intellectual property (IP) rights associated with SD memory cards and SD host-and-ancillary products. In January 2000, the companies formed the SD Association (SDA),

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1764-464: 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

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