The membership organization CompactFlash Association, which is in charge of managing the standardized enclosure of the CompactFlash (CF) mass storage devices, has made public an update with the 5.0 specification for this type of products with a clear improvement: A greater storage capacity that now could reach (in theory) up to 144 petabytes. Although it will be very complicated we see CF cards with this capacity, the new range of 48-bit addresses will allow to overcome the limitations of the previous specifications.
Shigeto Kanda, Canon representative and CFA chairman of the board (by the way, the CompactFlash Association website is a really really basic and old-fashioned site), pointed out that “the higher capacity and higher performance of CF cards enabled by the 48-bit addressing feature in the CF5.0 specification will further increase the value of DSLR cameras. The Video Performance Guarantee feature of the CF5.0 specification will help CF cards to expand into new markets such as high-speed movie equipment like professional video camcorders.”
As was pointed out in the official announcement, the new benefits of the 5.0 specification are mainly supported by the new range of 48-bit addresses, which allows to overcome the previous limitation that established a maximal storage capacity of 137 Gbytes for a CompactFlash card. Again, it will be very complicated the production of 144-petabyte cards in the short term, but of course, the new feature adds a margin of evolution to the industry.
Besides the theoretical increase of the capacity, additional improvements for the ATA standard have been added, as well as a better execution control and the so-called “Video Performance Guarantee Profiles” (recording guarantees for storing video), which is a field where CompactFlash cards had lost ground (at least temporally) with other formats such as SDHC that is currently more popular among the DSLR (Digital-SLR) and digital video camera makers.
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