Sundisk unveils 40MB flash card

Electronic News, Oct 18, 1993

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- With its flash-foundry Matsushita now ramping up 0.5-micron 16Mbit devices, Sundisk Corp. has begun sampling the industry's first 40MB flash card.

The 40MB flash card, packaged in a 5mm thick PCMCIA Type Ii form factor, is scheduled to ship in Q1, 1994 priced at $1,995. However, as Matsushita moves more production from 8Mbit to 16Mbit devices, Sundisk anticipates that it will be able to bring down pricing across its flash card line.

Sundisk is reducing pricing on its 10MB flash cards to $600 from $879 and 5MB cards to $375 from $499. Seagate Technology, which holds a 25 percent equity stake in Sundisk, last week said it will market the new 40MB removable storage devices under its FlashCard name.

The new Sundisk cards feature improved write/erase endurance of 2000 cycles; the company said design changes to its proprietary IDE controller as well as its firmware resulted in more reliability. No changes were made to the flash memory, which is partitioned into 512-byte data sectors.

The new flash card also has a programmable power feature that allows the storage device to operate at diffferent clock frequencies in different platforms. So far, Sundisk flash cards have been designed into platforms from Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Tandy, IBM, GriD and others, although Intel recently scored a win with Apple Computer (EN, June 14).

Sundisk is pushing ahead of other flash card competitors, at least temporarily, by moving to 16-Mbit based technology. IBM and Toshiba have fallen slightly behind schedule in shipping samples of 20MB 3.3mm PCMCIA Type I and 40MB Type II flash cards based on Toshiba's 0.7-micron, 16Mbit NAND flash circuits. IBM recently said it will sample in Q1, 1994 as opposed to late this year (EN May, 24).

Intel is also rampingg up its 0.8-micron flash capacity at several fabs, including Sharp and NPNX sources in Japan, to help drive down pricing; Intel has said it will increase its flash unit output by 400 percent over the next 18 months.

Based on its 8Mbit FlashFile memory chips, Intel soon plans to roll out 20MB memory cards. Sharp is currently producing Intel's most advanced devices, using a 0.6-micron ETOX IV process technology at an 8-in. wafer factory in Fukuyama, Japan.

Still, by moving to higher capacity and increasing yields, Sundisk is moving first to tap a burgeoning PCMCIA market for mobile and desktop slots ahead of Intel, IBM/Toshiba and others. According to In-Stat, worldwide flash card revenues will top $1.4 billion by 1997, up from less than $100 million in 1993.

While Seagate, which announced the Sundisk 40MB card last week along with new models of 5.25-, 3.5-, and 2.5-in. disk drives, plans to use its distribution marketing muscle to push the new technology, it also plans to leverage its own hard disk drive technology. Seagate plans to roll out a 10.5 mm PCMCIA Type III form factor drive at an unspecified capacity later this year (EN, Sept. 20).