Flash Cards

Electronic News, May 29, 2000 by Bob Million

What's the flash on new flash memory 1/4 PC cards? As the basic PCMCIA PC card standard has remained intact for more than 10 years, there have been numerous offshoot modifications made to accommodate its use over the years with the advent of smaller PCs and handheld-types of consumer electronics.

This has entailed the pioneering use of smaller memory cards, often referred to as 1/4 PC cards such as

CompactFlash, including Type II from SanDisk; SmartMedia (formerly SSFDC) from Toshiba and Samsung; Sony's Memory Stick; MultiMediaCard (MMC) from SanDisk and Siemens; and now the new Security Device Card (SDC) from Matsushita, SanDisk, and Toshiba.

The SDC is in the works to address copy-protection and content-purchasing schemes as well as improve the memory density and the data transfer rate over some earlier cards. As each of these smaller format cards have entered the market, they have engendered their own form of connectivity to the host body (connectors), while still adhering to the PCMCIA PC card standard through the general use of adapter cards.

So what are the trends for PC cards that are sold into a diverse marketplace with a wide range of applications? A hot consumer electronics market is upping the ante for flash card vendors that supply the portable digital medium that is replacing photographic film and audio tape. Digital still cameras, MP3 digital music players, notebook computers, PDAs, and voice recorders are today's main targets for flash memory cards. Poised to join themaand the impetus behind a new breed of small-format (1/4 PC) memory cardsaare automotive navigation aids (GPS), set-top boxes, and enhanced cell phones (smart phones) that store text like e-mail or phone numbers, or double as music players.

Most consumer devices (such as those that download data from the Internet) need the writeable, nonvolatile-storage capability of flash. Convenience, cost, portability, and effectively unlimited storage capacity are the drivers for flash cards. Acting like a small floppy diskathe latest ones are the size of a stick of gum or a large postage stampaflash cards offer an easy way to transfer stored images from a digital camera to a PC for display or transmission over the Internet. In the case of MP3 audio players, digital music is downloaded from a PC into a card that then plugs into a portable player.

Differentiating features include memory density; size and ruggedness; power consumption; copy protection; compatability with future flash chips; and cost, including licensing expenses. Although tomorrow's market will allow several card formats, some cards in play today will likely fall away. These might possibly include Miniature Card and Mega Storage Device to be replaced by SDC.

Fleck Research can be contacted at (714) 953-9000 or at the fleckresearch.com Web site.