cfast

COLOGNE, Germany -- There's room for a higher-end flash card format that's faster and more capacious than SD Card, and for years, CompactFlash has occupied that market niche.

But CompactFlash is running out of steam, and finding a successor to CompactFlash just got a lot messier courtesy of a new standard that arrived this week at the Photokina trade show here.

Last year, Nikon and Sony carried the XQD format to market as the would-be CompactFlash successor, with Nikon's flagship D4 camera accepting the cards and Sony making the cards. But Canon and professional camera maker Phase … Read more

Transcend, a major manufacturer of flash memory cards, has begun selling models built with the new CFast interface designed to succeed the CompactFlash format.

CompactFlash is still widely used in high-end SLR cameras but is increasingly threatened by the more mainstream SD format, notably the new high-capacity SDXC variety. But CompactFlash allies are working to modernize the technology.

CompactFlash uses the same data transfer technology as hard drives--specifically, the older IDE interface and more recently, the slightly less old UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) variety. While computer hard drives long ago moved to the faster SATA (Serial ATA) version, the CompactFlash format is only making the jump now with a new version called CFast.

CFast offers significantly higher data-transfer speeds--about 375MB/sec compared with 90MB/sec for high-end CompactFlash cards today. Faster data transfer on a camera means the memory buffer can clear out faster when shooting bursts of photos, something that's handy, for example, with sports photographers trying to take multiple sequences.

Transcend's CFast cards, though, aren't for the consumer market. Instead, they're for industrial applications, such as inside train engines or slot machines. And CFast uses a different physical connection, which means the cards aren't compatible with today's CompactFlash. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Lexar plans to introduce faster, higher-capacity CompactFlash cards using a new generation of the flash memory technology, a company executive said Wednesday.

Lexar's current top-end 300X-rated CompactFlash cards use a standard called UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) to transfer data at 45MB/second, and their capacity tops out at 16GB. But using a new generation of the standard, UDMA 6, Lexar will release cards that have significantly faster transfer speeds and larger capacity, Jeff Cable, director of marketing, said in an interview here at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show here.

Cable wouldn't be pinned down on precise details, but he said the new cards' capacity "probably" would be 32GB, and their transfer speeds likely would "pretty close to" UDMA 6's threshold of 100MB/sec, which is more than double that of today's UDMA.

Only newer SLR (single lens reflex) cameras support current UDMA technology, but it's spreading, and there are benefits. For example, cameras can take longer continuous bursts of photos, and photographers can zoom faster to check focus when reviewing shots on the camera LCD. Video, which is arriving in new SLRs, also can saturate data-transfer pathways. … Read more