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PCMCIA Announces NEWCARD Format
schnoz writes "Found this over at DPReview: "The PCMCIA technology association has today announced the 'NEWCARD' format. This new format makes use of PC Card, PCI Express and USB 2.0 technologies. The NEWCARD format is also aimed at both Mobile and Desktop PCs". Check out the rest of the article here."
The PCMCIA technology association has today announced the 'NEWCARD' format. This new format makes use of PC Card, PCI Express and USB 2.0 technologies. The NEWCARD format is also aimed at both Mobile and Desktop PCs. By drawing upon USB 2.0 and PCI Express, the NEWCARD specification will bring serial bus technology to a smaller form factor that offers more performance and improved ease of use. This new specification will revolutionize how PC developers and OEMs utilize the expansion slot for next-generation features such as wireless networking, storage and card readers.
Press Release:
PCMCIA Announces Development of New Expansion Card Technology for Mobile and Desktop PCsLeading Industry Groups Collaborate to Drive Introduction of 'NEWCARD' Specification
INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM CONFERENCE, San Jose, Calif., Feb. 19, 2003 - PCMCIA, a leading technology trade association, today announced the development of a new specification codenamed NEWCARD that takes the next step in PC Card evolution. The new specification builds on the successful characteristics of the PC Card: reliability, ease of use and wide industry support while delivering external expansion with reduced size, increased speed, lower costs and support of advanced serial I/O technologies, USB 2.0 and PCI Express.
NEWCARD marks the first time expansion card specifications will be shared among mobile and desktop PCs. Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, HP, Lexar Media , SCM Microsystems and Texas Instruments are among those supporting development of the new standard. Two key industry groups, the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) and the PCI-SIG (Peripheral Component Interconnect-Special Interest Group), are collaborating with the PCMCIA to support the underlying bus technology used in defining the NEWCARD form factor. PCMCIA will lead the NEWCARD specification development effort.
Innovative applications and technologies continue to be developed at an amazing rate, requiring PC clients to have the latest expansion capabilities, said Brad Saunders of Intel Corporation and chairman of the PCMCIA. By drawing upon USB 2.0 and PCI Express, the NEWCARD specification will bring serial bus technology to a smaller form factor that offers more performance and improved ease of use. This new specification will revolutionize how PC developers and OEMs utilize the expansion slot for next-generation features such as wireless networking, storage and card readers.
This initiative also marks the first time that three major industry work groups--PCMCIA, USB-IF and PCI-SIG--have partnered to promote and validate a specification. We expect NEWCARD to have a widespread impact on the industry because it leverages existing technology to make PC expansion easier and less expensive, added Saunders. In addition, the PC Quality/Ease of Use Roundtable, an industry group that focuses on reducing end-user issues, is providing guidance around human interaction with NEWCARD.
NEWCARD is targeted for both mobile and desktop system developers and OEMs seeking small form factors and sealed systems for smaller and thinner mobile system designs. Consumers will benefit from the compatibility of add-in cards between their mobile and desktop systems, similar to how USB devices can be shared between laptops and desktop clients.
The specification is slated for release later this year. Companies wishing to participate in the specification development are invited to contact PCMCIA. Currently, products supporting NEWCARD are scheduled to debut in the second half of 2004.
PC Card technology adds expansion capabilities such as memory, mass storage, networking and wireless communications to computers and other communications and consumer electronics devices. Future expansion capabilities range from wireless communications, TV tuners, security card readers to optical storage media.
Quotes from Supporting Organizations
Randy Groves, CTO, Dell Product Group: The NEWCARD standard will benefit corporate customers and consumers alike by increasing bandwidth and simplifying installation. We're pleased to support NEWCARD and are excited about its implications for future architectures.
Dan Forlenza, VP of Notebook Engineering, Hewlett Packard : HP believes PCMCIA NEWCARD will enable high performance, innovative form factors and improve the user experience. NewCard is the new expansion card of the next generation notebooks, which is why HP is actively involved in defining the specification.
Jan Janick, VP of Development, IBM: IBM is pleased to have been involved in the design of PCMCIA's NEWCARD standard. Customers will benefit from the new format, which will provide higher performance in a smaller package, and enable IBM to create the next generation of smaller, sleeker devices for mobile computing.
Anand Chandrasekher, VP and General Manager, Intel's Mobile Platform Group: NEWCARD is an exciting innovation for the existing PC Card form factor. By supporting two NEWCARDS in the space of one current device, mobile PCs will have increased flexibility in adding new functionality.
Doug Kellam, VP of Worldwide Marketing, Lexar Media: Lexar Media is pleased to support the development of NEWCARD by leveraging our expertise in flash based memory solutions. This new specification provides greater opportunity for future product breakthroughs using high speeds, smaller form factors and ease of connectivity.
Tom Philips, Director of Windows Hardware, Microsoft Corporation: The way people interact with their PC is a key component of development at Microsoft. PCMCIA's NEWCARD specification will offer new functionality to upgraded PC's. NEWCARD supports advanced serial interfaces that are great for plug-n-play, but also eliminates the cable clutter usually found with external expansion devices.
Tony Pierce, Microsoft Corporation and Chairman of the PCI SIG: The PCI-SIG is excited to be working with the PCMCIA on NEWCARD as the market momentum and applications for the PCI Express Architecture continue to expand across various market segments and innovative form factors. The PCI-SIG looks forward to collaborating with the PCMCIA and the USB-IF on joint enabling and compliance programs to ensure a range of interoperable products deploying exciting new applications in this form factor.
Robert Schneider, CEO, SCM Microsystems Inc.: NEWCARD addresses the need for a next generation, high-speed system bus standard and goes far beyond. The availability of both a high-speed single- and double-wide card enables development of critical new security applications based on smart cards, which are expected to become a key component of digital security. Long term, NEWCARD form factors can be leveraged beyond notebooks and handhelds onto open desktop systems. Once again, PCMCIA is paving the way for new technologies that bring immediate value to industry and help shape solutions that benefit the consumer.
Jason Ziller, Intel Corporation and Chairman of the USB Implementers Forum: Since USB is already the ubiquitous connection for peripheral devices in the industry, there will be lots of applications immediately available to put into the NEWCARD form factor. With the abundance of already certified USB-based silicon and the well-established USB-IF compliance program, USB will help to deliver high quality NEWCARD products to consumers.
From:a newcard.asp
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0302/03022103pcmci
(c)1999-2002 Digital Photography Review. http://www.dpreview.com/
Don't mod this guy up. Page text posters shouldn't be modded up anyways. You should always AC a page text post.
And besides, in this case their website is flying...go whore somewhere else.
And try not reading the web through a 14.4 Kpbs connection.
Read the article. They've made it possible to cram 2 cards in one slot by making a half-width card. Standard size cards aren't being eliminated.
It is refering to form factor.
No idea about PCI Express standards, but it is faster than your 6MHz 64-bit PCI bus for sure.
Not PCI, PCI Express. Aka 3GIO. The next ass kicking replacement of PCI.
Actually, I don't see why it wouldn't be compatible with current software. Most OSs already can handle hot-swapping of PCMCIA / USB devices, certainly they could easily handle an entire system of similar devices.
I could swear I read something about an entirely card-based computer maybe 6 years ago. I remember retelling what I had read to friends over and over, about the possibility of easily installing all of your hardware by just sliding it into some external slot.
Everytime I install hardware into current PCs, I always end up losing screws or cutting my hands on those metal spikes that line the bottom of PCI cards. If I dread installing hardware into my own PC, how could anyone expect normal folks like my mom to be able to do it? It's clear we have a long way to go. Everything should be as easy as PCMCIA.
PCMCIA is ISA. Cardbus is PCI.
It's Personal Memory Card International Association, but nobody cares.
No, I don't know where that extra C came from.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I don't see why anyone would add the ports without adding the hardware to use them, but otherwise, it's a good idea. PCMCIA-style devices in the back of a PC would make life easier for upgrades and the like.
I'd love to be able to plug 6 or 7 PCMCIA cards in the back of a desktop, for example, and upgrade from 10 Mbit Ethernet to 100 Mbit without rebooting, or drop in a modem in an emergency. Some of these features wouldn't work very well with Type II cards, but a load of Type III slots would work wonderfully.
Of course, the main issue is, as always, one of engineering. Bus speeds increase over time. PCMCIA can't handle anything close to 100Mbit/sec, so I've got a Cardbus Ethernet Adapter instead. Gigabit might eventually become an option, or Firewire 800, and then we'll need a new bus *anyway.*
You'd need an expansion backplane to handle this properly, such that you would crack open the box, replace the backplane, and then you can support the next PCMCIA standard. Of course, ideas like this have been done before, and tend to fail miserably for consumers, if only because they're too expensive to implement.
There are a handful of desktops that have had PCMCIA slots, though. DEC Multias come to mind, although I'm sure that there are others. It's a good concept, although it's apparently just not useful enough to take off.
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Why didn't they choose FireWire 800 or something like an AGP type i/o so that video card PC cards could be ultrafast?
Well, you can only have one AGP slot, and who wants to handle 30+ watts coming from a plugin card? Anyway, If you support 64bit/66MHz PCI, then you can just plug a Firewire card in.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Good summary from the BBC
Techie details from EE Times
What difference does it make? USB 2.0 is faster than almost any device you might care to connect through it.
Plus, Firewire isn't some much of the hack that USB is
Again, who cares? Both FW and USB2 work fine, and USB2 support in operating systems is really simple (because most of it is just like USB1).
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
It refers to data bus size. It's using a single PCI-Express lane for data transfer. If devices in the future require more bandwidth, more lanes can be added without much effort (first PCI-E graphics cards, for example, will be using a 16-lane bus which works in the exact same way.. except it has 16 lanes)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Gigabit ethernet has a maximum transfer rate of 128MB/s. The PCI bus can handle up to 132MB/s. Read this: http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/infobrf/ibpci.html That completely aside, this does not use the PCI bus. It uses PCI-Express or USB 2.0 (decided by the particular NEWCARD in question). PCI-Express can do 10GB/s in either direction (the NEWCARD will be limited to 2.5GB/s) while USB 2.0 can handle up to 400megabit/s. There is also no need for gigabit NICs to need heatsinks. There is a HUGE market for these things in the portable computing world. In the future, please read the specs before commenting.