What is the difference between Miniature Card, SmartMedia, Small PC Card, Multimedia Card and Compact Flash?

Small Form Factor Card Comparison (all dimensions in millimeters)

 

  PC Card* Small PC Card* Miniature Card* SmartMedia Card* MulitMedia Card CompactFlash
Length 85.6 45.0 33.0 45.0 32.0 36.0
Width 54.0 42.8 38.0 37.0 24.0 43.0
Height 3.3/5.0/10.5 3.3/5.0/10.5 3.5 0.76 1.4 3.3/5.0
Connector Pin/Socket Pin/Socket Elastomeric Surface Surface Pin/Socket
Contacts 68 68 60 22 7 50
Interfaces Memory, I/O, CardBus Memory, I/O Memory (DRAM, Flash, ROM) Memory (Flash, ROM) Memory (Flash, ROM) Memory, I/O

* Standard published by PCMCIA

 

What is the throughput of the PC Card interface?

Theoretical maximums are as follows:

CardBus (32 bit burst mode)
* Byte mode: 33 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 66 Mbytes/sec
* DWord mode: 132 Mbytes/sec

16-bit Memory Transfers (100 ns Minimum cycle)
* Byte mode: 10 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 20 Mbytes/sec

16-bit I/O Transfers (255 ns Minimum cycle)
* Byte mode: 3.92 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 7.84 Mbytes/sec

Please note that actual throughput may be substantially less than the theoretical maximums of the interface.

 
 † Information in this page is from PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) official website