In the decades of development and evolution of the storage industry, with the development of technology, numerous storage technical specifications have been born. In the past, storage product forms related to these specifications were generally dominated by storage vendors. In recent years, with the rapid development of smart terminals, storage products defined by existing standards have been unable to meet the needs of smart terminals for storage products.
Therefore, in order to meet the needs of industrial ecological development and break through the previous limitation that the electronics industry can only choose storage products based on general storage standards, a new storage standard and storage products jointly defined by terminal manufacturers and storage manufacturers based on actual product needs are needed. form.
In this context, the Intelligent Terminal Memory Association (ITMA), which converges the power of the terminal and storage industry chain to jointly develop new storage standards, came into being.
1. What is ITMA?
ITMA is an international Memory Association established for Intelligent Terminal
Intelligent Terminal Memory Association (ITMA) is a non-profit industry standard organization registered in 2020.
The main responsibility of ITMA is to formulate and publish technical standards. The purpose is to promote the development of ultra-miniaturization, high integration, diversification of functions, and ecological storage of storage products. The main target members are enterprises, institutions, organizations, etc. related to the smart terminal and storage industry chain.
The three working groups of Tech_WG, Test_WG, and Mkt_WG have established an A&AC to conduct quality monitoring from the source.
There are three subordinate working groups under the ITMA Council: Tech_WG, Test_WG and Mkt_WG.
ITMA Technical Workgroup (Tech_WG): is mainly responsible for defining product technical standards and specifications and the pushing development of products and related technologies.
ITMA Testing Workgroup (Test_WG): is mainly responsible for defining the product test specification, laboratory testing requirements and assessment management framework.
ITMA Marketing Workgroup (Mkt_WG): Define the use standard of unified trademark and relevant logo, collect market demand, conduct scenario application research, formulate marketing strategy and carry out marketing activities.
In addition, ITMA has set up an Accreditation & Arbitration Committee (A&AC) in response to the uneven quality of some products in the current storage market, and is responsible for reviewing qualified laboratories and reviewing self-declaration and test reports submitted by product suppliers. , To determine whether product evaluation and supplier self-declaration meet the requirements of the specification, and to make a ruling on complaints about selling substandard products and dishonest behavior in the evaluation.
2. ITMA starts from NM Card: conforms to the development trend of miniaturization of smart terminals
With the continuous development of ICT technology, smart terminal applications are changing with each passing day, and the storage industry, which is the core supply link of terminals, is developing in the direction of miniaturization, high speed, data security, large capacity, and low power consumption.
ITMA, as a standards organization responsible for the development of the convergent terminal and storage industry, conforms to the development trend of mobile terminals, with NM Card as the first standardized product, and its 1.0 version of the technology and test standards have been released on the official website.
Advantages of NM Card: Compared with mainstream memory cards in the market, the area is reduced by 34%, and it has the foundation to become a storage medium for mobile terminals
As electronic equipment has more stringent requirements for hardware size and space, the demand for storage miniaturization has become stronger, and storage products are moving towards small size, large capacity, data security, and high performance. The innovative memory card NM Card launched based on the Nano SIM card compatible design is more in line with the development requirements of smart terminal card slots. The specific advantages are as follows:
NM Card size design is compatible with Nano SIM card, the size is only 12.3mm X 8.8mm X 0.7mm, which is 34% smaller than the mainstream general memory card in the market, and it is more convenient for terminal design. At the same time, as a removable ultra-small storage product, it is more in line Mobile terminal trends and smart terminal card slot development requirements.
In response to the lack of strict quality supervision in the memory card market, ITMA’s A&AC will formulate many standards and specifications for NM Card, and tighten control from the source of production to ensure that consumers can buy high-quality products.
3. ITMA promotes product development based on the needs of adapted terminals
In recent years, with the continuous development of smart terminals, there has been a significant increase in audio/video content. Some smart models have no expansion slots. In addition, the internal space of 5G mobile phones is limited, the quality of memory cards is uneven, the card slots are too large, and the memory card market The development is not satisfactory.
Since NM Card shares a card slot with Nano SIM card, storage expansion can be easily achieved, high performance is enough to easily cope with 4K video, low rates and differentiated competitive advantages are expected to stand out in the market. Application areas such as mobile phones, tablets, security monitoring, vehicle terminals, PCs, set-top boxes, and drones are expected to become huge potential markets for NM Card.
ITMA is also actively promoting the development of NM Card technology. In order to further save terminal design space, NM Card 2.0 will be developed towards the integration of storage and communication with multiple cards. At present, relevant research and development work has begun, and NM Card will realize storage and communication functions. Integration is more in line with the trend of miniaturization of smart terminals.
In addition, NM Card also has room for improvement in performance and capacity. Customized encryption and new protocol development will also become important development directions.
4. ITMA creates a new storage ecosystem and opens up storage business opportunities
ITMA started from NM Card, established a new storage ecosystem, and explored business opportunities in the opening of storage hardware, application software, and industrial ecology, so that upstream and downstream companies participating in NM Card can have their own development space, and work together to make NM Card bigger and stronger. Industrial ecology, realizing marketization and international operation.
5. Conclusion
As an important link between the storage industry and smart terminal manufacturers, ITMA is based on current NM Card products, providing terminal manufacturers with miniaturized, high-performance, data security, and large-capacity storage products, reducing the complexity of terminal product design. In addition, storage manufacturers can more accurately grasp customer needs, thereby increasing production capacity to the sea, and jointly promoting new terminal storage product technologies and applications.