Ever since their inception in the early 1990’s, memory cards have been popular as a form of portable and size-efficient memory storage devices. Also, since the release of the first PD card in 1991, the technology used to make these flash memory devices have come a long way – with new editions/products released almost every year.
To give a clearer view, here is a brief recap of the memory cards that have been released from 1991 till date.
The Memory Card Time-Line
1991 – PCMCIA Card released
1994 – Compact Flash Card released
1996 – SmartMedia Card released
1997 – MultiMedia Card (MMC) released
1998 – RS-MMC / MMCMobile released
1999 – USB Flash Drive released
1999 – SD Memory Card released
2002 – xD Picture Card released
2003 – Memory Stick Duo released
2003 – MiniSD Card released
2004 – SDHC Card released
2004 – MicroSD / Transflash released
2005 – Memory Stick Micro released
2009 – SDXC Card released
2010 – Transcend Class 10 SDHC released
This list contains only the major products released, and not their edition releases (or other such variations). This simply conveys the fact that the NAND flash memory card industry is a fast paced one where research and technology is changing at an unbelievably rapid pace.
You can see that the first card released was the PCMCIA card (the PC card) – an obsolete ancestor of the present-day cards. It was used to expand computer capacities and later in network cards, hard disks, and modems as well. Although bulky and with very little storage, this card laid the foundation for the later generations of memory card.
The next significant development was the introduction of the CompactFlash memory cards by SanDisk. The card which we still use to-date, this card was slightly smaller than the original PC card and was much closer in concept and design to the current-day memory cards. In fact, it was almost half the size of the PCMCIA card with dimensions of 43 x 36 x 3.3 mm.
There was a two-year hiatus after the release of the CompactFlash, but this was simply the lull before the storm. From 1996 till late 1999, there was a continuous spate of new releases in terms of the various memory card/flash memory formats, as we know them today. These included the SmartMediaCard, the MultiMediaCard, the RS-MMC, and the USB.
Toshiba released the SmartMedia family, and although they were almost the same in physical size as the previous CompactFlash releases, they were quite popular; the SMCs were designed to be the successor to floppy disks!
Another major event was the release of the MemoryStick family by Sony towards the end of 1998. This invention was more compact, more powerful, and faster than any of the flash memories in circulation. Thereafter, the MemoryStick became an industry of its own – with the subsequent releases of the Memory Stick Select, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Duo, the Memory Stick Pro Duo, and the Memory Stick Micro. Currently the maximum capacity of a Memory Stick is 32GB!
All of these cards mark landmarks in the memory card industry. Each one of these made a significant contribution in coming from the ancient (and bulky) PC card to the jazzy (and 64GB powerful) compact flash cards and 32GB MicroSD’s of today.
