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M-Flash, Yet Another Flash Memory Format
Verteiron writes "Despite all the (mostly incompatible) flash memory/card formats out there already, a consortium made up of several Taiwan-based manufacturers are preparing to unveil a new one at the upcoming CeBIT. The memory itself, called M-Flash, will form the backbone of the new M-Card format. According to C-One, a member of the M-Card group and the maker of Pretec brand flash devices, the M-Flash memory architecture is cheap to manufacture and allows for devices 2/3 the size of existing MMC products. The M-Card format uses the USB 2.0 I/O specification, but C-One claims it will transfer data at twice the speed of USB 2.0 while using about a third the power required by current devices. To encourage adoption of the new card format, it has been designed to be compatible with the existing SD/MMC format at reduced speeds. C-One also plans to make the currently proprietary format an open standard. Palm Blvd. and the EE Times (free reg. required) have articles with a few more details."
Not
Sigh
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Not ANOTHER format.. now i'll need to buy a 7-way-card reader instead of the currenet 6-way beasts of devices companies put out.
Cant we all play nice ???
You mean like this?
I was pretty sceptical 'till I got to that part. This seems like a well thought out product all the way around.
TW
I don't know how other people feel about this, but for me, the Secure Digital format is pretty close to being as small as I want to get. I don't want to have to use tweezers to get my memory into and out of devices.
- Smart Media Card
- XD Card
- Compact Flash I
- Compact Flash II
- Micro Drive
- Secure Digital
- MMC card
- MMC II card
- RS-MMC card
- Memory Stick card
- MS Pro
- MS MG Card
- MS MG Pro Card
- MS Duo
- MS MG Duo
- MS Pro Duo
- MS MG Pro Duo
- UTMA Fish Card
aren't standards great
just as long as it's MY standard of course
With digicams heading towards 14 megapixels, I can see the need for faster data storage (ever waited for a 60mb RAW file to save to a CF card?), and introducing something that combines backwards compatibilty with SD/MMC cards and native USB2.0 support (No more card readers, just an adaptor cable, or possibly even a set of built-in contacts like the new SD/USB cards.) seems like a suspiciously common-sense approach.
I find it interesting that C-One compares the size of this card to the MM card. It almsot seems like the death knell is sounding already. MMC died, this has no backing from popular, trusted media manufactures (Pretec....did you ever buy anything made by them? I've never even seen them around here before). I mean, who cares if it's great, if it doesn't have the backing to bring it to the mainstream market? It's going to take one big format endorsed by all media manufactures, all camera makers, and all digital device makers to create a single standard. And for one innovation needs to stop for awhile. How can we possibly agree on a standard if something better comes out in 6 months?
WASTE - The Secure P2P
I'm generally happy with the convergence of these flash devices with one another. It looks like we'll eventually have two: USB and MMC - this MFlash does both. CompactFlash sockets can be filled with CF/MMC adapters. With the exception of the Sony (proprietary) Memory Stick - though Sony has started including both CF and MS sockets in top of the line gear, like their F-818 camera. Sony should release a CF MemoryStick socket. If eventually the Flash formats settle down the way floppy media formats did in the 1980s, we'll all benefit from the defragmented markets, economies of unified scale, and interop.
--
make install -not war
Incompatible with each other. Maybe you can call this not knowing your audience (though I'd assume most people know the formats aren't compatible with each other), but it's not illiteracy.
AccountKiller
The palm boulevard article says special drivers maybe needed for existing sd card readers. I guess this won't be working in my digital camera anytime soon.
Also I think it's pronounced Micro-card.
In related news, Motorola sued several Taiwan-based manufacturers for using the prefix "M-". Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, was heard to say, "What do we care? We use 'i', not 'M-'."
The Pretec brandname has been around for a while and their products are often found at the leading edge of memory technology rather than the mainstream. I guess there is money to be made in targetting the niche sector that *really* needs high capacities in single cards like the 12GB CompactFlash card that they make. As the linked article says, you could get the same amount of storage in three cards for a tenth of the price, but if you have no choice...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Competition is good...
All the current flash memory is pretty much the some. If M-flash will be everything it promises to be it should cause a drop in costs of flash storage.
...now run Linux from it and I'll be happy.
Seriously, it does suck that so many formats exist. <pun>At least hard drive formats aren't so fragmented yet.</pun>
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
it will transfer data at twice the speed of USB 2.0
Is that even possible ? Would any properly certified USB host-controller not be limited to USB2 speeds, unless they also force you to buy a PCI card that is M-whatever compatible ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
2/3 the size of existing formats? Do we need this? We're already in danger of accidentally inhaling these things or losing them between the ridges of our fingerprints. Jeez, I must have a terabyte lodged in various spots, slowly sloughing off with the dust.
... is that there's so many of them. Ack.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
and allows for devices 2/3 the size of existing MMC products...it has been designed to be compatible with the existing SD/MMC format at reduced speeds.
I presume we won't see the improvements in device size until they drop the MMC backwards-compatibility.
± 29 dB
Marketing firm A-Name announces the trendiest product or company naming sceme of 2005 is going to be a letter prepended to a single syllable.
YAFMF
I-Think this new T-Mark F-Mat is F-King Stoo-Pid.
Some interesting lessons here in standards one pays for.
You'll all remember the cell phone wars. While the rest of world used GSM, american carriers, looking for a competitive advantage and patent royalities, and certainly unwilling to pay royalties to their competitors, got going with CDMA and TDMA to name a few of the schemes. While technically superior perhaps, one ends up with a fragemented market. What's interesting to see is the recent moves to GSM even in the US.
Memory cards, the same thing. If there was a true, open standard without payments (but with optional certification) a la USB, I don't think you'd see the number of flash memory formats poping up that we have been. Instead, sony pulled another ATRAC stunt with their memory stick, and other manufacturers and devices developers played in their own camps.
Short term gain for long term pain, my computer must have 5 or six slots for flash memory!
Here's the Ahha moment for USB (after the HCI/OHCI stuff). "On the second version of USB, we looked at how we could learn from the first round, and we decided that it was better for the industry for there to be one spec that was available to everybody," said Jason Ziller, an Intel technology initiatives manager.
I'm not expecting to see m-flash in cameras or pdas anythime soon, but they may appear in DOKs (Disk On Key) very soon. For greatest compatibility, the USB interface would have to be compatible with the generic driver that windows/linux/macs use. Additionally, I'm not sure if they will have on-chip ESD and pad drivers necessary for driving cables (significant external components may still be neccessary).
If they were twice as fast as the present DOKs (12MByte/s reads? 10MByte/s writes), that would allow them to approach 2.5inch disk performance (and have smaller access time).
Old news, I got my M-Card from the University of Michigan years ago...
12 bits per pixel is only 4096 colours! I think 24 or even 32 bits is more what you need in a digital camera, especially a high end 14 megapixel one.
If you were talking about a normal image, you'd be correct.
But because Bayer sensors are all whatever the MP rating is with a giant color filter array in front of them, you are really capturing a greyscale image - with each pixel being greyscae of a certain spectrum (like Red, Green, Blue, or in Sony's case also Cyan).
You would be correct if you were talking about an image from a Foveon sensor, that has RGB layers per pixel to capture full image data. So a foveon pixel is really 12x3 or 36 bytes (which it what you were expecting).
Thus the controversy between current Foveon camers being 3.$MP. or 10MP (since they have as many photosensors as other 10MP bayer cameras would have).
But it does go to show how much an illusion the MP rating is when you are really subdivinging and then interpolating to get the final result. It's nothing like how you think of images in Photoshop.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And you thought the DVD+/-R debacle was silly..
http://www.usbgeek.com/prod_detail.php?prod_id=020 6
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
Mine has more!
http://www.photoscala.com/node/view/619
CF (type I & II), Microdrive, SD, SM, MM, Memory Stick, Memory Stick MagicGate, Memory Stick Select, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Duo MagicGate, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Pro MagicGate, Memory Stick Pro Duo, Memory Stick Pro Duo MagicGate, xD, MagicStore, MMC 4.0, RS-MMC, RS-MMC 4.0, Mini-SD.
asshole.
Had a dog chew on a CF card. Found it dirty on the floor with obvious teeth marks in the corner. And it still worked. At least it was only a 16MB freebie.
Id like to see any of those exposed terminal plate cards taking even remotely the same beating.
CF is a parrallell interface that's effectively a miniaturized ISA slot. While the CF cards themselves aren't very big
Memory transfer rates on CF cards are limited. So as media sizes increase, the devices themselves will become an impedement to video and floppy replacement applications.
I expect that we'll eventually see a CF replacement (still capable of housing a micro-drive) based on PCI Express.
Sony seems to be doing just fine with it's card. It's a proprietary format. But so is SD/MMC, and Memcard and xD.
Until PCIExpress/Express Card permeates the laptop market, we probably won't see a proper open standard successor to Compact Flash.
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For professional cameras, you may see the smaller Expresscard interface. Those big hulks are big enough to support the "stick".
Either this, or you will see a local wireless network where storage is worn in a bag or on a belt, the camera has enough fast memory to cache the images while they're being transferred.
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The ONLY memory format that is open is Compact Flash. Sony is JUST LIKE everybody else.
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CompactFlash is a miniaturized ISA slot.
There are TWO types of CF. Type 1 and Type 2. Type 2 is slightly thicker to accomodate a Micordrive.
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>>Despite all the (mostly incompatible) flash memory/card formats out there already
>Yet another of in a long series of illiterate articles. Not everyone was born to be a writer, but illiterate individuals should observe utmost care when submitting articles.
My word, you are absolutely correct. In my rash haste to compose a brief summary of a press release, I allowed an unclear parenthetical clause to escape my extensive proofreading. How could I have been such a fool?
Allow me to offer my sincere apology for this heinous transgression. That I have sullied, nay, tarnished the otherwise pristine linguistic landscape that is Slashdot through simple carelessness is all but unthinkable. My irresponsible actions surely herald the imminent transformation of this last shining bastion of syntactic excellence into a darkened cesspit of uncontrolled grammatical chaos.
Your accusation of illiteracy is well-founded, but falls far short of revealing the full nature of the crime I have committed. While I cannot hope for redemption, I shall seek to atone for my grievous sin. I write this in the hope that others may be warned and so avoid my fate. Hark, ye rash article submitters! Seek not to compose your summaries quickly, that they may be posted for the enlightenment of your fellow Slashdotters. The wrath of Donny Smith and others who cherish grammar above all else awaits those who follow my path. Avoid unclear parenthetical statements at all costs!
(unless you really feel like it)
End of lesson. You may press the button.