By integrating USB capabilities, Lexar intends to enable high-speed data transfer between a desktop PC and a consumer-electronics device such as a digital camera or an MP3 Internet music player. "Just by attaching a low-cost USB cable, consumer devices can automatically gain USB capabilities," said John Reimer, Lexar's president and chief executive. "Consumers no longer need to buy a USB reader/writer device that could cost as much as $80."

However, the surprise move is already generating debate over compatibility issues, and the technology could become a pawn in an ongoing legal battle between Lexar and SanDisk Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), the creator of CompactFlash.

Lexar's strategy is to open its proprietary technology to the trade association, licensing it on reasonable terms in hopes of establishing a standard for a new generation of CompactFlash.

It was unclear at press time how the rest of the card industry would respond, or whether the CompactFlash Association would seriously consider the idea.

So far at least one digital-camera vendor has committed to using Lexar's USB-enabled CompactFlash card, Reimer said. The unnamed OEM is expected to announce its product in June.

Lexar has designed a 1.875 million transistor CompactFlash controller with integrated USB. It will be in production in June and Lexar will offer cards with the controller to OEMs in early July, Reimer said. Lexar said it plans to start selling USB-enabled controllers to other CompactFlash card vendors in the fourth quarter, and intends to broadly license the technology to both chip and card makers.

However, a senior executive at SanDisk warned that the scheme could raise a "potentially huge compatibility issue. I haven't had the luxury of reading Lexar's plan yet," said Nelson Chan, vice president of marketing at SanDisk, the world's largest supplier of flash data-storage products. "But as far as we see it, it's a non-approved CompactFlash card based on Lexar's proprietary technology, supported by no other vendors today. It could cause great confusion among consumers."

But Reimer said that the technology would maintain both backward and forward compatibility. Used in an old machine with no USB presence, the card functions as a conventional CompactFlash card, he said. "We designed USB connectivity as a superset feature," Reimer said.

Faster transfer and easier connectivity between a digital camera and a desktop PC are major issues for camera OEMs, said Jacques Kauffmann, technology adviser to the Photo Marketing Association International. Putting USB on the CompactFlash card itself "sounds like a good idea," he said, but with one condition: "We definitely need compatibility." With incompatible flash devices already muddying the digital-camera market, Kauffmann said "we can't afford to have multiple incompatible CompactFlash cards."

Reimer acknowledged that system OEMs echoed such sentiments and also want an ensured second source.

"We are not expecting to add a huge premium to the new [USB-enabled] card," Reimer said. "Our cost of adding the USB capability onto the controller chip is less than 20 cents or so." A standard USB cell block occupies 6 percent of the new 6 x 6.8-mm controller chip, he said. Lexar has applied for a few patents in the area of "general connections embedded into media," as well as "specific methods to detect a media interface," Reimer said. However, "There is nothing to license at this point," he said, since none of the patents have been granted yet.

While typical serial ports permit data transfers at 20 kbytes/second and parallel ports at 500 kbytes/s, USB ports hold the promise of bringing the speed to 700 kbytes/s to 1 Mbyte/s.

Lexar's first product will accommodate data transfers at 700 kbytes/s. Lexar is also preparing a fast write card, which could support a 2.4-Mbyte/s rate, according to Reimer.

Putting USB on CompactFlash carries a number of advantages for consumers. In downloading applications from a PC to a camera or MP3 player, or uploading images from a camera's flash-storage devices, users need not turn on both the PC and consumer device. "They don't have to drain the precious battery power," said Jeff Wong, director of marketing at Lexar Media. "They can simply take the USB-enabled CompactFlash card out of a consumer device and connect it to a USB cable on a PC. The PC automatically recognizes the new card as an external drive — D:, for example."

There are some intrinsic disadvantages, however. SanDisk's Chan raised the questions of compatibility and upgradability, when the USB spec is updated from 1.0 to 2.0, for example.

Reimer countered by saying that "the USB specification, as it moves forward, will maintain backward compatibility, and we'll take advantage of that." In the future, when a new PC bears a port that supports USB 2.0, "users should be able to use the CompactFlash card designed for USB 1.0, even though the card may not be able to take advantage of USB 2.0's improved data-transfer rate."

Lexar's legal problems with SanDisk may lie, at least in part, behind Lexar's move to promote a new-generation card using its proprietary technology. More than a year ago, SanDisk filed a complaint against Lexar in the U.S. Federal District Court for Northern California alleging infringement of a fundamental solid-state flash disk patent held by SanDisk.

SanDisk charged that Lexar is using its patented innovations in an attempt to unfairly appropriate some of SanDisk's business.

The case is still in court. Lexar's Reimer said, "We just completed claim constructions a few weeks ago, and we are now moving into the mutually agreed-upon settlement discussions before the trial begins." Reimer indicated that Lexar might use its USB-enabled CompactFlash technology as a "trade" in those talks.