Specifications

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10) Memory Stick Micro, or “M2” (15mm x 12.5mm x 1.2mm), a tiny version with two low
operating voltages of 3.3V or 1.8V to allow their use in very small hand-held devices such
as camera phones. The lower 1.8-volt power requirement uses 40% less power than the
larger Memory Stick Duo version, an advantage in smaller devices where the greatest
weight is in the battery. The MagicGate copy protection is part of the M2 requirements.
The first M2 cards come in capacities of 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB.
With the introduction of the cobalt blue Memory Sticks, Sony makes MagicGate DRM (Digital
Rights Management) protection a standard feature for all Memory Stick flash storage. Although
the use of parallel transfer speeds up data reading, the write speeds of the newer cobalt blue
MagicGate versions remain about the same as for the early basic blue versions. The newer cards
also retain the write/protect switch on the card that prevents accidental erasure, just as Secure
Digital cards and floppy diskettes do.
XD PICTURE CARD
The xD (Extreme Digital) Picture Card is a new device introduced by Olympus and Fuji as a
replacement for Smart Media. Smart Media cards are limited in their capacity despite their
physical size, so the xD Picture Card is designed to have advantages in both physical size (20mm
x 25mm x 1.78mm) and a large future capacity up to 8 gigabytes. Changes in the design of the
internal architecture of the xD cards with capacities greater than 512MB, however, have reduced
read/write speeds and have made the cards incompatible with some of the earliest xD cameras.
The xD card gets around the problems of being “the new kid on the block” by including adapters
that allow it to work in Compact Flash and Smart Media slots. Like the Smart Media cards, the xD
card has no internal controller; so the cost of the adapters has to include the cost of the required
data controller.
XD FLASH CARD
APPLICATIONS OF FLASH CARDS
The Compact Flash and Smart Media cards began as removable storage devices for laptop
computers and digital cameras offering far greater storage capacity than floppy disks at much
faster transfer rates. Floppy disks are little more than plastic cartridges containing a circular piece
of magnetic tape that spins like hard drive. Flash media, on the other hand, offer significant
advantages over diskettes:
• no moving parts
• shock resistance
• capability of over a million read/write/erase cycles
• far greater durability
• much wider temperature and humidity range
• smaller physical shape
• amazing storage capacity for such small devices
Figure 14