Fujifilm 64MB xD Picture Card

Product Information

Digital photographers are taking more photos and they are doing so with cameras of higher resolutions. Fujifilm has responded to this influx of high-resolution pictures by providing a media card that doubles the memory capacity of the current 1GB product. The new 2GB xD-Picture Card provides the storage space necessary to keep these photos until they are printed and shared. Valhalla, NY, August 8, 2006 - Digital photographers of all levels—amateur and professional alike—will be pleased to learn of the availability of a new 2GB xD-Picture Card from Fuji Photo Film U.S.A., Inc. Center Valley, Pa, August 8, 2006 - Olympus Imaging America Inc. proudly introduces the new 2 GB Type M-Series xD-Picture Card, called the M2 GB, an advanced ultra-compact memory media designed for digital cameras. The M2 GB has the greatest storage capacity in the xD-Picture Card series and is scheduled to go on sale in August 2006. Type M/M+ and Type H cards [ edit ] xD-Picture Card, 1000MB, type M xD-Picture Card, 512MB, type H A size comparison of an xD-Picture card with a MicroSD Card

Small maximum capacity relative to other memory card formats. First-generation xD cards (Type S) have a maximum capacity of only 512MB. Type M expands the theoretical maximum capacity to 8GB (8000MB), but as of January2009 [update], there are no cards available with capacity greater than 2GB. Very similar to a standard NAND chip. Modified XD readers can be used to read arbitrary NAND chips. The memory format used is not well documented. It is difficult to study it directly, since most camera devices and most USB card readers do not provide direct access to the flash memory. Since the cards are controller-less, cameras and card readers must perform wear leveling and error detection. They normally hide the portion of the memory which stores this information (among other things) from higher level access. [20]The original xD cards (Type S) were available in 16MB to 512MB capacities. The Type M card, released in February 2005, [13] uses multi-level cell (MLC) architecture to achieve a theoretical storage capacity of up to 8GB. As of June2010 [update], Type M cards are available in sizes from 256MB to 2GB. However, the Type M suffers from slower read/write speeds than the original cards. Photographers no longer have to worry about whether their hiking trip, family vacation, or wedding will be captured in its entirety," explained Jim Avato, Marketing Manager, Electronic Imaging Products Division, Fuji Photo Film, U.S.A, Inc. "The 2GB xD-Picture Card can store 1,640 5-MegaPixel photos, giving photographers the freedom to snap away without worrying about dwindling storage capacity. Movie capture can be as long as 58 minutes at 320 x 240 resolution."

The increasing pixel counts of digital still cameras and the growing use of these cameras for advanced audio and video recording are driving the demand for higher capacity storage," said John D. Blakeslee, business manager, digital memory products, Olympus Imaging America. "Olympus plans to apply this high-capacity technology to develop the xD-Picture Card for Olympus digital cameras with memory capacities eventually reaching up to 8GB."

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Olympus says that its xD cards support special "picture effects" when used in some Olympus cameras, though these software features are not intrinsically hardware-dependent. Type H and M+ cards however, are required in newer models to capture video at high rate (640×480 @ 30fps). Due to changes in the cards' storage architecture, newer Type M and H cards may have compatibility issues with some older cameras (especially video recording). Compatibility lists are available for Olympus: Olympus America's [17] and Fujifilm's. [18] Newer cards are incompatible with some card readers. However, a few models of xD card readers based on the Alauda chip do allow direct access (bypassing the above mechanisms) to an xD card's flash memory. These readers have been reverse-engineered and Linux drivers have been produced by the Alauda Project, [21] which has documented the on-chip data structures of the xD card. [22] According to this information, xD card headers are similar to those used by SmartMedia, and include chip manufacturer information.