
MultiMediaCard Flash
Preliminary MultiMediaCard Product Manual;
1998 SANDISK CORPORATION
Page 60 of 79
5.8.4 RCA Register
The 16-bit relative card address register carries the card address assigned by the host
during the card identification. This address is used for the addressed host-card
communication after the card identification procedure. The default value of the RCA
register is 0x0001. The value 0x0000 is reserved to set all cards in Stand-by State with
CMD7.
5.9 Memory Array Partitioning
The basic unit of data transfer to/from the MultiMediaCard is one byte. All data transfer
operations which require a block size always define block lengths as integer multiples of
bytes. Some special functions need other partition granularity.
For block oriented commands:
Block
—The unit which is related to the block oriented read and write commands. Its
size is the number of bytes which will be transferred when one block command is sent
by the host. The size of a block is either programmable or fixed. The information about
allowed block sizes and the programmability is stored in the CSD.
For devices which have erasable memory cells, special erase commands are defined.
The granularity of the erasable units is general not the same as for the block oriented
commands:
Sector
—The unit which is related to the erase commands. Its size is the number of
blocks which will be erased in one portion. The size of a sector is fixed for each device.
The information about the sector size (in blocks) is stored in the CSD.
Group
—A number of sectors. Its size is the number of consecutive sectors which will
be erased in one portion. The size of a group is fixed for each device. The information
about the size is stored in the CSD.
For devices which include a write protection:
WP-Group
—The minimal unit which may have individual write protection. Its size is the
number of groups which will be write protected by one bit. The size of a WP-group is
fixed for each device. The information about the size is stored in the CSD.
Each erasable unit (group and sector) has a special “tag” bit. This bit may be set or
cleared by special commands to tag the unit. All tagged units will be erased in parallel by
one erase command following a number of tag commands. All tag bits are cleared by each
command except a tag or untag command. So usually immediately after a set of tag
commands an erase command has to be sent by the host. No-tag and no-erase
commands abort a tag-erase cycle irregularly.