IBM, Toshiba show flash card entry

Electronic News, May 24, 1993 by Reinhardt Krause

TOYKO -- IBM and Toshiba last week said they will begin shipping engineering samples of 5V PCMCIA-compatible flash cards in Q3. At the Business Show Tokyo '93 here, the companies showed prototype cards offering up to 20MB capacity using Toshiba's 16-megabit flash circuits.

The IBM/Toshiba announcement is a big sign that the industry's move to less power-hungry flash cards, which read and erase memory at a single voltage, is finally coming closer. What's more, by ramping up with 16-meg parts, the IBM/Toshiba team trying to push ahead of competitors toward the 64-meg flash generation, a move expected to make flash-based cards true competitors to hard disk drives in certain computing applications.

So far, flash cards from Intel, AMD and Sundisk/Matsushita have used 12V and 5V for retrieving data. AMD recently said 1MB and 2MB flash cards using its 5V technology will be available later this quarter and higher capacity versions in 1994. (Sundisk offers a 5V-only version of its flash cards using internal dc converters; Hewlett-Packard uses it in its 95LX palmtop).

IBM will make the flash cards available internally and to the OEM market through its Technology Products division. Hans Debruyn, program office manager for PC Card subsystems, declined to discuss expected pricing for the IBM/Toshiba cards.

Flash card prices are still high in the industry, as rivals Intel, AMD and Sundisk/Matsushita attempt to ramp up plant capacity for flash parts. When Hewlett-Packard rolled out its new HP 100LX palmtop PC this month, list prices age cards were $499 for 5MB meanwhile, recently priced its 12V, 1MB card at $175, its 2MB card at $250 and a 4MB version at $477.

IBM said its business plan calls for using 0.7-micron NAND flash parts produced by Toshiba. However, Mr. Debruyn noted that National Semiconductor and Samsung have signed on as second-sources for Toshiba's NAND flash architecture, giving IBM the option of using them as suppliers if Toshiba's capacity proves inadequate.

IBM said volume shipments of the 3.3mm thick, 85.6mm x 54mm flash cards, to be offered in a range of capacities from 3-20MB, will begin in Q4. Mr. Debruyn would not estimate how many cards IBM plans to ship.

At the Tokyo show, IBM and Toshiba did not reveal full specs such as access times and number of write cycles. While Toshiba's NAND flash architecture may not offer access times as fast as other approaches, Mr. Debruyn said it has other advantages, such as in treating data, that would make NAND technology useful as a hard disk replacement.

Since their flash alliance was disclosed last year (EN, June 29 and July 6, 1992), IBM has funded development work at Toshiba's design center in Fujisawa. IBM has located its PCMCIA-compatible product development, including network adapters and fax/modems, in Toronto, Canada.

For its part, IBM has designed a single-chip file controller for the card to make it appear as a hard drive to the system. Its approach for host interface and software management is similar to Sundisk's and different than Intel's, which requires device driver software.

Mr. Debruyn said future versions of the flash cards would conform to PCMCIA Type II standards and offer 40MB capacity. He said flash prices would need to drop significantly and personal handheld computer markets would have to show noteworthy growth before high-capacity flash cards would be introduced.