EEVblog Electronics Community Forum

General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: opablo on July 11, 2013, 07:12:36 pm

Title: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: opablo on July 11, 2013, 07:12:36 pm
Do you know about the different smart card technologies available today ?

Let's leave on the side if it's contact or contactless... cpu/security or plain storage... etc

My only focus is capacity... whats the highest capacity I can have in something that looks like a credit card to the average joe?

I understand it's 128KB... what do you know about this ?
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: PA0PBZ on July 11, 2013, 07:47:58 pm
How much does it have to look like a credit card?

http://www.giftsuppliers4uae.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=124 (http://www.giftsuppliers4uae.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=124)

Available to at least 8GB...
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: Short Circuit on July 11, 2013, 08:44:27 pm
4Mbit EEPROM using SPI
http://www.cardlogix.com/docs/techbriefs/CardLogix_DCTB-CLXSA004MF1-02c.pdf (http://www.cardlogix.com/docs/techbriefs/CardLogix_DCTB-CLXSA004MF1-02c.pdf)
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: smashedProton on July 11, 2013, 09:39:51 pm
You can use the card give the address and security credentials to access the data somewhere else.
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: peter.mitchell on July 12, 2013, 09:07:11 am
You can use the card give the address and security credentials to access the data somewhere else.

This.
The only time you need data on card is if the device you're going to use it with isn't connected, and if it isn't connected you can safely assume the device doesn't need a lot of data.
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: opablo on July 12, 2013, 12:52:36 pm
thanks for the opinions...

the reason I asked was because I was mentally exploring the idea of a medical card in which your medical records are not stored by your medical insurance company (which may be reluctant to share them) nor the goverment (which is the opposite... share them too much)...

what if your medical records are on your own ?

There's a lot of reasons why I think this is a bad idea but that doesn't prevent me from exploring this kind of ideas to check if they are really bad.


anyway... does any of your countries already have electronic medical records available in any way ?
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: peter.mitchell on July 12, 2013, 03:37:52 pm
yes.
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: smashedProton on July 12, 2013, 08:04:21 pm
What you are talking about is already done with pets.  They have rfid under their skin.
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: tom66 on July 12, 2013, 10:22:13 pm
I don't think 1MB would be enough for much detailed information like past xrays etc which I believe are stored in most medical record systems.
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: NiHaoMike on July 12, 2013, 11:50:18 pm
MicroSD cards are almost as thin as credit cards. It might be possible to embed one in a carrier that is credit card sized. (Or multiple, if you really want the most storage in that form factor!)
Title: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: WarSim on July 13, 2013, 12:32:37 am
The memory size you can fit in a credit card is entirely dependant on cost. 
Several hundred Gigabits can fit in a credit card device with released tech. 
Commonly/readily accessible is also a relative term and where you have placed your line.

Some people can't afford their prescription costs let alone buying a card costing the same amount. 
For others spending $100.000USD on such a device is trivial. 
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: cthree on July 13, 2013, 06:19:46 am
Sorry, media is dead. That includes all storage media. Data is going into the Internet cloud so anything you develop or propose which stores data on some discrete device, disk or card is already obsolete and the people who are planning such systems are already looking well past what you are suggesting.

The writing is on the wall. The only thing you'll carry is a key or ID dongle which will identify your records and allow access to them, just as credit card chip and pin authorizes purchases on your credit and debit accounts now. For me, that will be my gov't health insurance card.

Most medical records are still paper based. It will be a long time before they become fully digital. There are a lot of old doctors scribbling notes in file folders even today. Mine still does. Software (people) are the bottleneck.
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: SeanB on July 13, 2013, 06:31:05 am
Paper records, digital imaging and an archive that has both a massive server farm and tape backups and alongside it is a set of filing cabinets with the original notes ( written in that variant of english called doctor) and printouts of the images as well. Often you get a disk with the stuff for the patient as well so that there is an off site copy in case they go to another specialist.
Title: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: WarSim on July 13, 2013, 06:50:04 am
Cthree: this is how I identify the different parts.  :)

Hardware the ICs
Firmware code to tell the IC how to work
Software instructions to the IC
Interface coms between firmware
UI user interface
Wetware the user

Goofy automatic spell checker
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: NiHaoMike on July 13, 2013, 02:35:34 pm
Sorry, media is dead. That includes all storage media. Data is going into the Internet cloud so anything you develop or propose which stores data on some discrete device, disk or card is already obsolete and the people who are planning such systems are already looking well past what you are suggesting.
That doesn't work too well with data caps, especially on mobile networks. Even with unlimited connectivity, local storage is easily orders of magnitude faster. There are also security concerns, but good encryption fixes that.

And how does the "cloud" itself store data?
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: cthree on July 13, 2013, 02:50:56 pm
Cthree: this is how I identify the different parts.  :)

Wetware the user

That is a good term, I will adopt it.
Title: Re: About SmartCards... Does MB capacity exists ?
Post by: cthree on July 13, 2013, 03:12:36 pm
Sorry, media is dead. That includes all storage media. Data is going into the Internet cloud so anything you develop or propose which stores data on some discrete device, disk or card is already obsolete and the people who are planning such systems are already looking well past what you are suggesting.
That doesn't work too well with data caps, especially on mobile networks. Even with unlimited connectivity, local storage is easily orders of magnitude faster. There are also security concerns, but good encryption fixes that.

And how does the "cloud" itself store data?

Do you mean physically or logically?  Physically it doesn't really matter, that's why they call it a "cloud", after the popular diagramming symbol which represents 'a thing' you don't know or don't need to know the details about. All anyone, who isn't responsible to storing them, needs to know is the API for how to access them.

The actual storage of the records may not even be handled by the insurance company or government. It may be and probably is outsourced to a service provider. They may not even be stored in your country but in several data centers spread throughout the world. It's all very enterprise, big data.