Samsung Enters PCMCIA Market with Family of High-Speed SRAM Cards

Industry's Fastest Static RAM Cards Ease Data Exchange Among Desktops, Portable, PDAs
Retain Information Even While Changing Batteries

SAN JOSE, Calif., August XX, 1993 -- Samsung Semiconductor fired its initial salvo in the fiercely competitive PCMCIA market today, introducing a family of static RAM cards having the fastest access times in the industry. Samsung's SRAM cards make it easier to transfer spreadheets, documents and other information between desktop, portable and handheld computers, and retain their data even with the main battery removed.

The KMCJ616256, KMCJ616512 and KMCJ6161000 SRAM cards have fast 150-nanosecond access times and 512K-byte, 1M-byte and 2M-byte densities, respectively, and are compatible with PCMCIA Ver. 2.0 and JEIDA Ver. 4.1 standards. Each card contains a replaceable, lithium main battery and an on-board, rechargeable auxilliary battery. The main battery can be changed without data loss because the auxilliary battery keeps power applied to the memory circuits at all times.

"For most applications, using a 20-megabyte flash memory card just to exchange spreadsheet or word processor data is a gross case of overkill," said Robert Eminian, Samsung's assistant director of SRAM and nonvolatile memory marketing. "The SRAM card can be used like a floppy disk, providing a much more cost-effective solution for data exchange between hand-held, portable and desktop computers."

According to Eminian, Samsung is developing a wide range of SRAM, DRAM, ROM and flash memory cards, and expects to introduce higher density and extremely low-power 3.3-volt SRAM cards later this year and early next year.

Market Intelligence Research predicts the market for portable computers -- including PDAs, sub-notebooks and other hand-held computers -- is expected to reach $50 billion by 1998.

SRAM cards are completely solid state, eliminating the bulky, power-hungry mechanical drives needed for floppy disks, and making them ideal for small, battery-operated computers. SRAM cards can also be used as main memory expansion for hand-held computers because of their low power requirements.

Samsung's SRAM cards operate on a single 5-volt (±5%) power supply, require between 0.3 and 0.5 milliamperes in standby mode, and draw between 10 and 34 microamperes from the battery when removed from the host system, providing up to 3.4 years of data retention. Housed in a PCMCIA Type 1 cartridge with two-part, 68-pin connector, Samsung's SRAM cards provide completely static operation without the need for clocks or refreshing, and are based on Samsung's proven KM681000ALT-L low-power CMOS SRAM.

PCMCIA Standard

Originally developed in 1985 by the Japanese Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA) to provide a method for expanding memory in small form factor devices such as instruments and hand-held computers, the PC Card standard has evolved through joint development by PCMCIA and JEIDA to include input/output functions common to personal computers.

The PCMCIA standard today specifies the physical dimensions, pin assignments, electrical characteristics, protocols and file formats for removable, credit-card-size devices. The standard provides hardware specifications for both PC Cards (memory and peripherals) and the hosts the PC Cards plug into. Taken together, this standard provides an extension of the native x86 CPU bus that allows PC Cards and system data to be interchanged -- a variety of peripherals can be inserted into any PCMCIA slot in any PCMCIA host, mobile and desktop, regardless of the underlying hardware or operating system.

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