Hard drive firms moving into flash territory; expect PC memory card group to approve form factor urged by rotating media makers

Electronic News, May 11, 1992 by Jonathan Cassell

Expect PC Memory Card Group To Approved Form Factor Urged By Rotating Media Makers

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Makers of hard disk drives, working to defend their presence in the fast-growing mobile-computer market against the anticipated inroads of solid-state memory devices, were expected late last week to cross a major milestone in winning acceptance for a new standard that puts their devices on an equal footing with flash memory.

At a meeting here Thursday, the board of directors of the PC Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was expected to approve a new form factor for PC cards that has been championed by makers of rotating media storage. Following approval by the 14-member board, which includes representatives from NEC Technologies, AT&T Microelectronics, Silicon Storage Technology, Mitsubishi Electronics of America, SunDisk and Intel Corp., the standard would go out to members for final approval.

Earlier in the week the Sunnyvale, Calif., association, which was founded by and is dominated by makers of solid-state storage devices, also announced a separate pair of standards intended to promote the use of flash memory.

The new form factor, known unofficially as Type III, is for PC cards that are 10.5mm thick at their center -- enough to accommodate higher-functionality devices such as Token Rings and rotating media. The PCMCIA now recognizes only cards conforming to the original, 3.3mm Type I specification, which is commonly used for memory cards, and the 5mm Type II specification used by makers of communications devices. All three classes are 3.3mm thick along their guide rails and connector ends for insertion into the standard PCMCIA slot; Types I and II also are available in extended versions that are 50mm longer.

While Type III has uses in communications applications, one of the first companies to use the thicker form factor was MiniStor Peripherals Corp. for a 1.8-inch hard drive unveiled a few weeks ago (EN, March 23). A slew of other drive builders is expected to follow by early 1993, according to Skip Kilsdonk, a Maxtor Corp. executive who is the only representative of a hard-drive firm on the PCMCIA board.

While the PCMCIA board was expected to approve Type III, association chairman and president John Reimer said makers of solid-state memory harbor "some concern" about the entry of hard-drive makers, even as they recognize that it is in all members' interest to foster broad acceptance of the technology.

"There's concern that people will think that they can have either rotating storage or solid-state and it's all the same," said Mr. Reimer, who also is vice president of marketing at solid-state manufacturer SunDisk Corp.

Because the cost per megabyte of rotating media currently is much lower than that of solid-state, it is vital to the solid-state manufacturers that the public perceive their solution as different and better. Even with a recent steep price reduction, the cheapest flash-memory card on the market, Intel's 20MB card, still runs $611, compared with $350 for a comparable 1.8-inch hard drive (EN, April 27). With both devices following a steep downward price trend, makers of solid-state memory don't expect their products to be price-competitive with hard drives until 1995.

Thus, solid-state manufacturers in the PCMCIA have been emphasizing the short-comings of 1.8-inch hard drives, including their current inability to respond to system queries, an important element of the PCMCIA standard, Mr. Reimer noted. Many of the drives also may not currently be rugged enough to meet a required three-foot drop test.

But Jim Miller, vice president of sales and marketing for hard-drive builder MiniStor, dismissed such criticism from the solid-state manufacturers as self-serving. "SunDisk is afraid of us because we are so cost-effective," he declared.

Mr. Miller said his own firm's 1.8-inch drives will be able to comply with the PCMCIA drop test by July. As for the system query requirement, MiniStor is pushing for PCMCIA approval of a 13.5mm interface that will allow the drive to communicate its status to the system.

Despite the strong representation of flash-memory manufacturers on the board, a number of hard-drive firms will join MiniStor in shipping 1.8-inch, PCMCIA-approved hard drives in volume in early 1993, predicted Maxtor's Mr. Kilsdonk. In doing so, he noted, the drive makers will be responding to strong demand from systems vendors anxious to keep their options open. Zenith Data Systems, IBM and Mr. Kilsdonk's former employer, Apple Computer, all have representatives on the board.

"By and large, the thrust for this organization has to come from the systems manufacturers, and they want both silicon storage and hard drives," Mr. Kilsdonk said.

Also last week, PCMCIA unveiled the ATA and AIMS standards for mass storage devices. ATA, or AT Attachment, allows solid-state disks to emulate hard drives, partitioning the data stored on them into 512-byte sectors. AIMS, or Auto-Indexing Mass Storage, is a card storage standard for image and multimedia information.