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Mighty Mini Media

The capacities of flash memory and small storage formats are skyrocketing--and you may have to live with more than one type.

Scott Spanbauer

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The Tiniest Peripherals: SDIO

Secure Digital cards are more than the up-and-coming small-format storage media: Like CompactFlash cards, SD cards can serve as the basis for a new generation of thimble-size peripherals--cameras, GPS receivers, and wireless network adapters--that will slide into the SD slot on a PDA or smart phone.

Late last year, the Secure Digital Association ratified its I/O specification--the standard for peripherals based on the postage stamp-size cards. In early March, Palm's European division began shipping the first SDIO device, a $129 Bluetooth card made by Toshiba; Palm plans to market it in the United States eventually. We tested a preproduction version of the card, successfully using it to transmit a business card from a Palm I705 to a Bluetooth-equipped notebook.

Since all current Palms and many newer Pocket PCs have SD slots, the market potential for SDIO devices seems huge. Not surprisingly, prototypes of SD cameras, GPS receivers, and other miniature devices have been making waves at trade shows for the past year or so.

But you'll have to wait a bit longer for additional commercial products. For starters, SD Association technical committees are still working on specifications for particular devices. Association president Ray Creech expects that the draft camera spec will be available by the time you read this, with draft specs for GPS modules and 802.11b wireless adapters to follow later in the year.

Another issue for devices with SD slots is support. The SD slot controllers need to be upgradable or already capable of handling the new I/O duties--that will vary by vendor. Moreover, no OS currently has native support for the SDIO standard (Palm owners can use the SDIO Bluetooth card on some models, but that is not the same as native SDIO support). Therefore, users must rely on peripherals vendors to develop it for each host device--and that's unlikely to occur until the standard is better established.

When will OS support appear? Palm aficionados can expect to see SDIO support in devices based on Palm OS 5 by fall. Pocket PC support could take longer: Since Pocket PC 2002 just debuted late last year, no one expects Microsoft to act swiftly. In the meantime, at least one company, BSquare, is offering a program for PocketPC vendors who want to support SD and SDIO cards in handhelds planned for release by the 2002 holiday season.

--Yardena Arar

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