TOKYO -- Sony Corp. and five other Japanese companies have proposed a compact flash-memory-card that uses a file format with larger sectors. Its sponsors say the format is better suited to audio/video and digital still-camera applications.

MemoryStick, as the card is tentatively called, will compete with the CompactFlash format supported by SanDisk Corp. and its backers, as well as Toshiba Corp.'s SmartMedia card and the Miniature Card format supported by Intel Corp., Sharp, Fujitsu and Advanced Micro Devices.

The card also has the backing of Casio Computer Co. Ltd., the largest player in the digital still-camera market, Fujitsu Ltd., Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. and Sharp Corp.

An industry analyst called MemoryStick "a sign of probable reorganization" of the compact flash-card market. "The group members in a body will form a rivaling power to CompactFlash in the market," said Masahiro Suzuki, a Dataquest senior analyst.

The card is shaped like a piece of chewing gum--21 x 50 x 2.8 mm--in which four flash-memory chips can be mounted and a logic ASIC developed by Fujitsu is also implemented for memory control. For use in consumer products, the card has only 10 pins to increase reliability and durability. The capacity is 2 Mbytes to 32 Mbytes using currently available flash chips, but it is scalable as larger density chips become available in the future.

A Sony spokesman said the MemoryStick has a simplified file management, using 8 kbytes as the minimum recording size. Audio and video data are generally large and were not efficiently handled on card formats with 512-byte segments optimized for computer-based data processing.

The file format is compatible with an image-data format proposed for the IrDA standard to transmit digital still-camera data by infrared ports. That format is being proposed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), Sony, Sharp, Casio and Okaya System Software. When the proposed IrDA image format is adopted as an IrDA standard, data exchange with computers will also be easy, the Sony spokesman said.

Data can transfer at 330 kbytes to 1.5 Mbytes/second for recording and 2.45 bytes/s for reading out--fast enough for MPEG-2 transmission, but startup targets are still image- and audio-data storage, the Sony spokesman said.

Casio has yet to use external flash cards in its popular digital still cameras, sticking with internal flash ICs. Though Casio has been on the CompactFlash committee for several years, a spokes-man called MemoryStick "the solution for Casio's cameras."

MemoryStick can accommodate any vendor's chips regardless of NAND, NOR or other types of flash memory but the original members do not include manufacturers of SanDisk's CompactFlash (including Matsushita Electronics Corp.) and SmartMedia (Toshiba and Samsung Electronics), which are already used in digital cameras.

The group expects to finalize detailed specifications by October. Sony plans to sample this year and begin volume production next spring. But other members have a less-aggressive schedule: Fujitsu plans to ship samples next spring, and Sharp intends to market it at the end of next year. Other members have not yet decided on their market schedule.

Sharp and Fujitsu are among the supporters of Miniature Card. Sharp plans to promote MemoryStick for its audio and video products while promoting Miniature Card for data-processing equipment. Fujitsu cooperated with Sony to develop electrical specifications and memory control of MemoryStick, and "MemoryStick will be added as a new product line," Fujitsu said.

Dataquest's Suzuki said that even with a comparatively late start, "there still is a chance for MemoryStick" because the flash market is growing so rapidly. Dataquest projected that the total number of digital still cameras and image-processing equipment for PCs will grow to 13.9 million units worldwide in the year 2000. Along with other applications, these products are expected to create a strong demand for compact-flash cards.

Toshiba took the MemoryStick announcement in stride, calling it "just another format in this arena." Hiroshi Iwasaki, who developed SmartMedia and is now leading its promotion corps at Toshiba, acknowledged that MemoryStick's market may overlap some with SmartMedia. But, he said, "we are offering SmartMedia as a storage medium like a floppy disk."

"SmartMedia is a one-chip solution and is actually like a memory package itself," Iwasaki said, allowing a lower device cost. By contrast, he added, MemoryStick's concept seems similar to CompactFlash and Miniature Card: memory chips mounted on the printed-circuit board.

"Compatibility? We have been working at SSFDC [Solid State Floppy Disk Card, SmartMedia's original name] Forum for a long time to establish data compatibility among SmartMedia-compliant products," said Iwasaki. For example, he said, a SmartMedia card recorded on Fuji Photo Film's camera can be read by Toshiba's and Minolta's cameras, since both are compliant with SmartMedia's format.

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