History (1992): For Flash Cards, After Intel With Sharp, IBM With Toshiba, Mastushita With SunDisk, and Fujitsu With AMD

Until now, IBM hadn’t announced any research or development project on flash memories. This hadn’t stopped Big Blue from developing a penbook offering 2 slots for two 10MB flash cards.

Additionally, IBM is an executive member of the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association ever since it exists.

Now believing that the product is of big interest, Big Blue, via its Japanese subsidiary, has just signed a technology sharing agreement with Toshiba, the Japanese electronics company, the first one to have entered into flash memory, as soon as 1986.

Tohiba agrees to share its flash technology with IBM who will develop a controller device allowing high speed read and write operations.

IBM and Toshiba are already partners in a joint venture which manufactures large-size liquid crystal displays and have an alliance together with Siemens to develop next gens of DRAMs.

IBM is aiming at 40 and 8MB flash cards using respectively 16 and 32Mb NAND flash EEPROM.

On its side, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. or MEC (Osaka, Japan) has signed an agreement with SunDisk (Santa Clara, CA) to manufacture in a Japanese wafer foundry flash EEPROM memories based on the SunDisk technology. AT&T also serves as a foundry for SunDisk. MEC will produce 4 and 8Mb flash EEPROMs that will be utilized in SunDisk’s line of solid state mass storage systems ranging in capacities from 1 to 40MB.

Furthermore, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Japan’s Fujitsu Ltd. announced a $700 million joint venture to manufacture and market flash memory chips and EEPROMs. Each partner will contribute $350million to build a factory in Japan. Production will begin by the end of 1994.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue `≠54, published on July 1992.