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Standard Brewing For PC Card Replacement 'Newcard'
winston_pr writes "The details on the successor to the PC Card is starting to take form with details being given in this article at Nikkei Japan. The standard is scheduled to be finalized in 2003, while the first PCs with NEWCARD slots are expected to ship in the second half of 2004. Will this mean the end of all these crazy SD-card connection based peripherals?"
Technology Analysis: NEWCARD Standard to Replace PC Cards
Standardization for the NEWCARD, hailed as the successor to PC Cards, is almost complete at the PCMCIA. The first PCs with NEWCARD slots are expected in the second half of 2004.
Most notebook personal computers come with slots for PC Cards, and the consumer is quite familiar with them. The standardization process for the NEWCARD (development codename), the successor to PC Cards, is well under way. NEWCARD offers key advantages in terms of faster speed and smaller size. The interface technology has been changed from the prior Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) technology to PCI Express, achieving a peak data transfer rate of 250 Mbyte/s in one direction, or a total of 500 Mbyte/s two-way. This is about four times faster than the peak performance of existing 32-bit PC Cards with CardBus technology. It will be available in two shapes, with the smaller measuring only 34mm wide, 75mm long and 5mm thick. The per-card mounting area is about half that of current PC Cards.
The Personal Computer Memory Card Interface Association (PCMCIA) is writing the standard jointly with standard bodies like the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA). Involved are major PC manufacturers like Dell Computer Corp of the US and Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) of the US; and of course Intel Corp of the US and Microsoft Corp of the US. The standard is scheduled to be finalized in 2003, while the first PCs with NEWCARD slots are expected to ship in the second half of 2004, when volume production of PCI Express integrated circuits (IC) begins.
PC Cards Lack Speed
While PC central processing unit (CPU) clock frequencies are rising along with the speeds of peripheral technologies like PCI Express and Gigabit Ethernet, the PC Card hasn't evolved since 1995, when the 32-bit CardBus standard was adopted. Work began on the NEWCARD standard when, as PCMCIA chairman Bradley Saunders of Intel said, "We recognized that the PC Card standard wouldn't be able to handle developing applications smoothly unless we took action."
Expansion cards like the PC Card and NEWCARD play vital roles in incorporating new functions into PCs. They make it possible for PC manufacturers to avoid the risk entailed in implementing new functions, because they can make a better-informed decision after watching PC Card sales for a while (Fig 1). A number of functions that are standard in PCs today, like analog modems and Ethernet, were once available as PC Cards.
The interfaces that PCs are likely to offer over the next few years include 1-Gbit Ethernet, which is dropping rapidly in price, and ultra wideband (UWB), still being developed to handle data transfer rates from several hundred Mbit/s to several Gbit/s.
NEWCARD media is expected to make possible compact, easy-to-carry hard disk drives (HDD), too, taking advantage of that high-speed throughput at 250 Mbyte/s one-way. The data transfer rate for the PC Card ATA Interface standard PC Card storage applications peaks out at 66 Mbyte/s. If a compact HDD can be directly connected to PCI Express via NEWCARD, then high-speed data transfer will be possible. (Table 1)
Smaller Designs Wanted
The small size is another attractive feature of the NEWCARD, and directly reflects the shrinking size of the PC itself.
As mentioned above, NEWCARD card equipping space is much smaller than current PC Cards. This is to allow two NEWCARD slots to be placed next to each other on a notebook PC, for example, because the new and thinner notebook designs are too thin to allow slots to be stacked vertically.
US PC manufacturers promoting NEWCARD hope to use the new media in desktop machines as well as notebooks. Chuck Stancil, Personal Systems Group, PC Desktop R&D, Advanced Technology Business at HP, is eager: "Cases for desktop machines are shrinking steadily, too, and the smaller we can make an expansion slot, the better."
Stancil revealed promising NEWCARD applicatio
Finally, a new consumer computer technology that is not acronym based!
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People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms for crying out loud!