ExpressCard Replaces PCMCIA

April 28, 2005

ExpressCard is a smaller and faster version of the venerable PCMCIA card that's found on most laptops (see "ExpressCard: Changing The Face Of Computing," Nov. 24, 2003, p. 64; ED Online 6608). The ExpressCard standard incorporates two high-speed seria

William G. Wong

Most PCI Express cards will use one or the other. As with PCMCIA, ExpressCards will address a range of functions, from storage to peripheral interfaces. The small-form-factor version of ExpressCard has the potential to replace the USB flash drives. This will take years, though, just as it took years to get enough USB sockets to make the USB flash drives a practical alternative to floppy disks.

ExpressCard's form factor is large enough for a compact hard drive. Thus, it becomes an intriguing choice for removable storage.

The seeds of success for ExpressCard have been planted. It remains to be seen how they will grow.

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

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