A New Global Memory Card Standard

Lucas123 writes "The MultiMedia Card Association has approved a new memory card standard called the Multiple Interface Card (miCard). The card will make transferring pictures, songs, and other data between electronic gadgets and PCs easier. Twelve Taiwanese companies are preparing to manufacture the new miCard. 'The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means most users won't need separate card readers anymore. MMC cards fit most consumer electronics, while USB connections are built into a wide range of IT hardware...'" Initial cards will hold 8 GB; the maximum the standard supports is 2,048 GB.

Finally..

[rustalot42684 (1055008)]

A new standard that will unify ALL the others... where have we heard this before?

Re:Finally..

[samtihen (798412)]

I found an image showing what these things apparently look like:
Link to Image [chinareviewnews.com]

The image shows that they can be used with an adapter to fit an existing SD card slot.

Can these things just be stuck strait into USB slots?

He meant MMC vs. SD.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

So you didn't bother to look at the image the parent posted? Apparently all of these cards can be plugged into USB ports, unlike special SD cards that need to have an internal USB plug.

No ... the parent was talking about the difference between an MMC (that's "MultiMediaCard") and SD ("Secure Digital") cards and slots.

Many people think that they are the same, but they are slightly different. MMC came first, and was a pretty neat format, but Sony and the other big music companies decided they hated it, because it didn't have built in features that made it DRM-friendly. So they "upgraded" the format and made SD, which includes an extra pin on the connector, an area of the card's memory that's not user-accessible (for storing the media keys, according to some never-widely-implemented DRM scheme they were cooking up), and a lock/unlock switch. They somehow got the manufacturers to kill MMC, by not producing many large-capacity cards for it, and replace it with SD.

From a consumer's standpoint, we got a lock/unlock switch, higher prices for a while, and lost some capacity to the key-escrow area. (The latter is hardly noticed now, but it really sucked back on 32MB cards). MMC seems to have come back from the grave lately, though, mostly because of the reduced-size card implementations. (Maybe it's easier to implement in hardware and software than SD? I'm not clear on that.)

These new memory cards are compatible to both USB and MMC, not SD. However, most SD card slots are backwards-compatible (IMO, that's a misnomer; SD was hardly a step "forwards" for anyone except the content monopolies) to MMC, so to the consumer it's "same difference."

Been there, done that...

[Tmack (593755)]

Well the obvious advantage here is USB support.

...several Years ago...Blah [engadget.com]

Tm

pictures ?

[by Anonymous Coward]

computerworld could use some of these, so they can store some pictures:
http://images.google.com/images?q=miCard [google.com]

"Compatibility", or "planned obsolescence"?

[pla (258480)]

The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means most users won't need separate card readers anymore. MMC cards fit most consumer electronics, while USB connections are built into a wide range of IT hardware...'" Initial cards will hold 8 GB; the maximum the standard supports is 2,048 GB.

...Of course, since most older MMC card devices can't read anything over 4GB, you'll still need to upgrade either your storage or your devices (or both).

I applaud the direct USB compatibility and the increased capacity, but don't kid us with claims of backward compatibility. Everyone already has 2-4GB MMC/CF/SD/XD cards in all their devices nowadays, and the industry needs to find an artificial reason to upgrade. Nothing more, nothing less.

Licensing saves big bucks.

[twitter (104583)]

Of course, since most older MMC card devices can't read anything over 4GB, you'll still need to upgrade either your storage or your devices (or both).

Why? Have your old devices stopped working? Mine have not and I've got more than enough flash cards for the forseeable future. Time marches on, sometimes things get better. My six year old CF based Cannon camera is still a champ, but it shipped with a 16MB card! 64 MB cards were just enough for a weekend, 256MB cards were nice and the 1GB card I have is strictly overkill. My newer of the same takes MMC and I knew it's limitations when I bought it. 1GB cards are enough to get as much video as the device has battery. I'm looking forward to HD video devices that will tax this new card.

The big reason to move seems to be licensing. FTFA:

Officials expect local companies to save $40 million in licensing fees thanks to the card, in addition to profiting from sales. Taiwanese companies will not have to pay royalties to make miCards or related technology.

Slam, that's a lot of money. Hopefully, they see the same logic for OGG and friends. I'd really like it if my next camera did not come with a CD full of Windoze shit and that everything worked out of the box.

you're confused

[nanosquid (1074949)]

This is the upgrade of the MMC standard to beyond 8G. That was "planned obsolescence" in the sense that everybody knew that eventually, we'd need a new standard for that. But every other flash standard has done the same because it didn't make sense to design a standard for 4G+ cards in the days of 8M and 16M cards.

"Backwards compatibility" means that you can use your old cards in new devices conforming with the new standard. They also gave you a small card format and direct USB compatibility. Those are nice features; if they didn't care about backwards compatibility, they could just have chosen a new, small format that was incompatible with all your old cards.

Yes, but does it have a 30 year old file system?

[pashdown (124942)]

Please, lets do something other than FAT.

Re:Yes, but does it have a 30 year old file system

[pchan- (118053)]

Many posters are commenting here that FAT works across all operating systems and that's why it's being used. If these manufacturers came out with a new file system specification (say, based on BSD UFS), I doubt it would be a big deal for Microsoft, Apple, and the Linux Kernel developers to include it in there.

The reasons we are stuck with FAT is:
1. Simplicity. This is huge for embedded devices (IE, the things that do the writing to all of these cards). A read-only FAT driver can be implemented in a few kilobytes of (compiled) code. It requires trivial amounts of memory to operate (only a few hundred bytes). I've written a bootloader for an embedded product that could load an OS from a FAT partition and it was under 10 kilobytes. A read-write implementation is not much bigger and the memory requirements are similarly trivial. No other major file system out there can claim this. Particularly, modern file systems like NTFS require huge amounts of memory (comparatively) due to the complex structures they need to maintain, and have massive, complex code to read and write.

2. Reliability. I know this seems counterintuitive for such a lousy file system, but FAT is fairly resilient both to power failures (or card yanks), and more subtle corruption such as bad drivers or media defects. Sure, it may corrupt and lose your file, but it very rarely destroys the entire file system and lose the rest of the files on there. This is again because of the simplicity of the structures and the fact that very little needs to change on disk when a modification is made. Remember how many times Windows 95 crashed? How many times of that did you get major FS damage? Compare and contrast with Ext2.

So, yes, FAT is a terrible file system compared to modern ones. But there's a reason everyone uses it.

Re:Yes, but does it have a 30 year old file system

[itzdandy (183397)]

unfortunately, to be universally accessable it needs to be fat. ntfs for windows would work but write support is not complete across platforms or is in a functional beta state. ext2 would work but drivers would need installed on a number of OSs to use it. if this is released @ 8GB, i wonder what system then plan on using?

Re:Yes, but does it have a 30 year old file system

[Qzukk (229616)]

FAT32 supports up to 8TB volumes in 2k and xp under certain conditions, and generally 127GB volumes will work fine on win9x. Microsoft nerfed their format tool to ensure that people used ntfs instead. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006/EN-US/ [microsoft.com]

Re:Yes, but does it have a 30 year old file system

[MojoRilla (591502)]

The problem isn't just the FAT32 device size limit, it is also that FAT32 has a maximum file size of four gigs. Given this format will be used for videos, that is a cripling limitation.

According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Microsoft's solution is exFAT.

Obligatory question

[GaryOlson (737642)]

Is that a 2048GB miCard of porn in your pocket; or are you just glad to see me?

Anyone know what the physical form factor specifications are?

Let me be the first to say

[Colourspace (563895)]

2048 Gigabytes *should* be enough for anyone...

Thank goodness

[teknokracy (660401)]

I think it's great that SD/MMC has taken hold as a "standard" of sorts. CF was once the king, but is too big by today's standards. SDMMC is good because it's not TOO small (i.e., I'd expect my own mother to lose a microSD card but not an SD card), and it has a wide range of applications like SDIO cards for wi-fi and other uses. And, the adapters for micro/miniSD make sense too.

Now, if only they can convince Sony to at least stop making their OWN formats obsolete...

Christ, Not Another One

[segedunum (883035)]

We already have to put up with different memory card formats when we switch devices and phones, Mini SD, SD, XD, MMC etc. etc., and these people are creating a totally new format that we can all call a standard and not have to worry about it all any more?!

Forgive me for being a tad sceptical at that logic.

Don't need another "standard"

[Dan East (318230)]

We don't need another standard. A few days ago at Wal Mart I saw Wii-branded product that is really slick. It is an SD card, but the back of the card has been notched out so that the last few millimeters are the width of the little PCB that is in the connector part of USB. So the card fits in SD slots as normal, and the back side can be directly plugged into a USB slot.

Here it is. [walmart.com]

Here is a similar product [engadget.com] with a slide on sleeve. I assume that might be needed for physical compatibility with some SD slots?

Here is a SanDisk combo SD / USB memory card [engadget.com], but I don't like it as well because it has moving parts which can break.

These products are pure genius. Personally, I think the SD standard should be updated to increase supported capacity, so we can use a ubiquitous form factor long into the future. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have these worthless PCMCIA memory cards lying around, which I replaced with now worthless CF memory cards, which I've now replaced with SD. I don't want another change, and we don't need anything smaller than Micro-SD. So only bandwidth and capacity need to increase, which the SD standard can be modified to support (while maintaining backwards compatibility) as the technology improves.

Dan East

The important part

[Tribbin (565963)]

Although it's sort of a technical duplicate; it looks simple and sturdy. But more important:

"Officials expect local companies to save $40 million in licensing fees thanks to the card, in addition to profiting from sales."

If enough companies use this, it will be the standard for, say, at least ten years. So everybody complaining 'great, just wat we need; another standard'; please think again.

ahh so...

[JustNiz (692889)]

I wonder how long it will be before Sony release their "similar enough to fill the same needs except more expensive and totally incompatible with anything except Sony hardware" version.

Re:Yet Another Media Card Format (YAMCF).

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

This one looks smaller than XD. It looks like it is about the same size as the piece of plastic inside the shell of a USB connector. It might be the same as MicroSD, I don't know. It's not the first card to offer USB compatibility. There are standard SD cards that can fold in half to present a USB connector to the user, but that's not a standard.

Re:What?

[thePsychologist (1062886)]

As a matter of fact, a USB plug doesn't have to be bulky! Most of it is just protection for the interface. There are USB plugs just as thin as the card itself. For instance, a Sony product:

http://www.superwarehouse.com/Sony_mini_storage/b/ 250/c/2634 [superwarehouse.com]

Re:But does it have DRM?

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

And would SONY approve?

That's a better question than you probably intended.

This new memory card format marks a major shift in who's leading and shaping the market for electronics. The companies involved in setting this standard are all what used to be second-tier manufacturers - companies like Asustech and BenQ. In the past, it's been Sandisk, Sony, Siemens et al who've decided what shape our storage cards will be.

I think it's pretty revealing that this group of second-tier Taiwanese manufacturers has come up with a unifying design instead of fragmenting the market even more, as has been the habit of Sony et al. Your DRM comment becomes more relevant when we realise it's this same group who've been providing us with inexpensive DVD players that support way more standards, with less restrictions than the old guard Euro/America/Japanese based electronics companies.

It's probably a good sign for those of us who despise DRM.

Re:But does it have DRM?

[rob_squared (821479)]

"That's a better question than you probably intended."

That has to be the nicest insult I've ever heard.

Re:Yeah!

[adolf (21054)]

Such adapters exist, and aren't too hard to find. Here [amazon.com] is an example.

Things like this will keep CF around for a bit longer, but I do suspect that its days are numbered. Flash is currently improving faster than CF-sized hard drives, so the little disks which made CompactFlash so desirable as a pro standard are no longer important.

And, there's something about the big, fat, durable, and mostly self-cleaning contacts on an SD card which makes the insertion process a whole lot less scary than the 40 pin (!!!) socket connector of CF.

Other than that, it's just a lot more compatible. My PDA, laptop, cell phone, car stereo, and consumer digital camera all have SD slots on them.

I'll miss CF when its gone, though, because the format's inherent ability to act, pin-for-pin, just like IDE hard drives makes for some useful (though probably not very interesting) hacks, which is something that none of the other flash formats are currently capable of. I've currently got two diskless computers here booting directly from CompactFlash cards which are plugged directly into the IDE bus, which has so far worked quite nicely. One is an old 386 laptop which now has zero moving parts (and which should last indefinitely), while the other is a K6-2 box that is doing some audio DSP work (which is now almost silent).