What is an XD Memory Card?
An XD memory card stands for extreme digital memory card. This card was first developed and released in the market by Olympus and Fujifilm in July 2002. The card is based on NAND type flash memory circuits (EEPROM). Measuring 20.0mm x 25.0mm x 1.7mm, the XD memory card is smaller in size than a postal stamp.
The XD memory cards are mainly used in Olympus and Fujifilm digital cameras and Olympus digital voice recorders; Fujifilm also made an MP3 player (xD-MP3) that used the cards. Access to the data is carried out via a lateral connector with 18 pins, allowing a transfer rate of 1.3 Mb/s to be reached and potentially up to 3Mb/s for writing and around 5 Mb/s for reading.
Today XD memory cards are available in capacities of 16 MB up to 2 GB. The cards are competitive with Secure Digital card (SD), Compact Flash (CF), and Sony’s Memory Stick. The main advantage of XD memory cards is that they are faster in speed than memory sticks.
Although Toshiba Corporation and Samsung Electronics manufacture the cards for Olympus and Fujifilm XD memory cards are now sold under other brands, including Kodak, SanDisk, PNY, and Lexar, but are not branded with the respective companies’ logos, except for Kodak.
However, due to their higher cost and limited usage in products other than digital cameras, XD memory cards are known to be losing ground to SD, which is broadly used by PDAs, digital audio players, and most other digital camera manufacturers.
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