Toshiba readies SD counter assault on Memory Stick
By Paul Kallender
EE Times
(04/09/01, 3:29 p.m. EST)
TOKYO — In a move to pump up the Secure Digital Memory Card format for its impending battle with Sony Corp.'s Memory Stick, Toshiba Corp. has released a series of read/write controllers that support SD Memory Cards, SmartMedia and SD I/O cards.
The TC6374AF controller features an ATA interface and supports SD Memory Cards and SmartMedia. The chip will enter volume production this month, to be quickly followed by a slew of products aimed at extending the application range of SD memory beyond digital still cameras and PCs at present and into PDAs, 3G phones and Bluetooth, said Ryohei Yamaguchi, manager of Toshiba's custom LSI technical marketing and engineering department.
By June, Toshiba will offer four more SD controllers. The 6377AF and XB chips will support a standard memory bus interface slot added to such products as PDAs and mobile phones; the chips will include Content Protection for Recordable Media-based encryption/decryption circuitry. The TC6373XB, which will be available in a 328-pin plastic BGA, will help miniaturize PC card controllers, and the 6380AF will give users the option of selecting either a standard memory bus or a Compact Flash interface, Toshiba said.
Though Toshiba does not yet offer a laptop computer with an SD Card slot, the company said it is pushing quickly toward embedded applications, particularly with the 6374AF, 6380AF and 6377AF devices, all of which include SD/SmartMedia and MMC compatibility.
"This year we will enhance SD I/O compatibility with improved speed to PCIX," said Yamaguchi. "All of these are PCI associated and the standard memory bus interface is much more friendly than any RAM interface."
Seeing Bluetooth as one major application of SD I/O, Toshiba expects to introduce a fistful of networkable products, including GPS devices and radio tuners this summer, once members of the SD Card Association have agreed on specifications, said Tomoji Takada, senior manager of Toshiba's custom LSI technical marketing and engineering department.
Further out, Toshiba plans to offer a second generation of SD Cards with data-transfer rates of 10 Mbytes per second in 2002, along with 1-gigabyte cards by the end of next year, Takada said.
Make or break
Toshiba and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. see the next 18 months as the potential make or break period for the SD Card format as it battles against the Memory Stick format developed by Sony and the Secure MultiMedia Card backed by Hitachi Ltd., Sanyo Electric Co. and Infineon Technologies, said Yamaguchi. While the Secure MultiMedia card is strong in mobile phone applications, Toshiba believes the memory card format market share battle will be won or lost in the domestic Japanese market, Yamaguchi said.
The Memory Stick's cumulative shipments passed 10 million units last month, and the cards are already migrating out of digital video and still camera applications into PCs, audio and portable devices, according to Sony. Since its release in 1999, Sony said the Memory Stick has taken 23 percent of the 30-million-unit global market for flash memory storage media, and captured 25 percent of the Japanese domestic market as well.
And Sony isn't resting on its laurels. The company will unveil a 128-Mbyte Memory Stick on Tuesday (April 10) and is looking to add Bluetooth compatibility this year. The company intends to turn the Memory Stick into a do-it-all memory expansion module, a Sony spokesman said. The Memory Stick is already landing design-wins outside of Sony, including Alpine car-navigation systems and Seiko Epson printers. But Sony's main counterattack will come with the Memory Stick "Duo," which will be out "before March 2002," the Sony spokesman said.
Sony only?
While the Memory Stick consortium includes household names such as Aiwa, Pioneer, Sharp and over 140 other companies, Takada said he finds the comparative lack of non-Sony products that use Memory Stick telling.
"Some say that we finished development half a year late. But the SD card will fit many types of applications, unlike the Memory Stick, which is used mainly through the Sony brand," Takada said.
"In my experience, many customers are saying only Sony and Aiwa are strongly backing the Memory Stick. Other companies are weighing up which is better or have already backed the SD Card, such as Sharp. And generally speaking, the major U.S. companies are waiting to see what the Japanese companies will do," he said.
Led by Toshiba, Sandisk and Matsushita, the SD Card Association has built up a powerful list of supporters. Matsushita, which is seen as a crucial presence with its National/Panasonic brands, is putting its full bulk behind the SD consortium and SD technology, said Kazuhiro Tsuga, general manager of the company's multimedia development center. "We are making good alliances that are fair and open [to challenge Memory Stick]," Tsuga said. "We want to make the SD Card the de facto standard."
Matsushita has already shipped an SD audio player shaped like a wrist watch, and will make "every effort" to populate its products with SD slots, a Matsushita spokesman said.
"The war has already started and we are going to dominate," said Takada.
