CompactFlash card stores half a CD's worth of data

SMART Modular Technologies has expanded its Flash product line to include a new 320Mbyte Type I ATA CompactFlash (CF) card as the first product within its new high performance ATA storage family.

SMART Modular Technologies has expanded its Flash product line to include a new 320Mbyte Type I ATA CompactFlash (CF) card as the first product within its new high performance ATA storage family.

SMART's CompactFlash is designed for data and code storage applications and offers clear benefits in density, performance and connectivity over similar CF solutions.

SMART's CompactFlash uses up to five 512Mbit Flash chips to achieve densities up to 320Mbyte (half the storage capacity of a CD-ROM), enabling the lowest-cost CF card solution for this capacity at this time.

With the recent introduction of 1Gbit Flash chips, the density for CF Type I will increase to 640Mbyte.

Later this year SMART plans to introduce a CF Type II card with densities up to 1Gbyte.

SMART's CF cards typically write data at roughly two to three times faster than other CF products on the market today.

SMART's CF cards are based on an ATA controller with an integrated USB controller, creating one of the lowest-cost USB connectivity solutions currently available.

ATA storage products with built-in USB connectivity can be identified by the trademark "USB-enabled" logo.

With adapters for USB, PC card and IDE connectivity, SMART's CF has evolved into true universal media.

"By adding USB connectivity to our CompactFlash card we have achieved a broad-based connectivity solution with considerable cost advantage and minimal tradeoff at the card level", said Alan Marten, SMART's Vice President and Business Unit Manager, Memory Products Division.

SMART also plans to offer CompactFlash cards that address the needs of applications which require operating temperatures in the commercial and industrial temperature range (-40 to +85C), such as wireless local loop, industrial, GPS, CarPC and intelligent home power management systems.

SMART is targeting its high-performance CompactFlash product offerings at OEM markets such as networking, telecommunications and data communication applications as well as mobile and embedded computing, automotive, GPS and industrial applications.

"Declining Flash prices make ATA storage solutions more attractive for use in many new applications where reliability, performance and low-power consumption are required", said Alan Niebel, Managing Director, Web-Feet Research.

Web-Feet expects that CompactFlash Cards will grow from 11.6 million units in 2001 to 25.3 million units in 2002.

Moreover, these CompactFlash Cards are projected to account for roughly 20% of the Flash card market, which is expected to grow from $1.9 billion in 2001 to approximately $5 billion in 2002.

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