The CompactFlash Association, founded in October 1995 to promote adoption of CompactFlash as a worldwide standard for removable digital data storage cartridges, has been joined by a further 12 companies, boosting membership to 30. The ultra-small removable storage system developed by Palo Alto, California-based SanDisk Corp was introduced in October 1994. The 12 computing, semiconductor, imaging, communications and consumer electronics companies that announced their membership in the five-month-old CompactFlash Association include Hitachi Corp, Micron Technology Inc, Sony Corp and Sharp Electronics Corp. The organization makes the CompactFlash trade mark and specifications available royalty- free to member companies. The technology is compatible with the existing PC Card and the Association hopes widescale adoption of the standard will lead to a system of plug and play transferrable data. Applications such as digital cameras, pagers, cellular telephones and handheld computers are being developed to use the technology. Until now, CompactFlash has been manufactured exclusively by SanDisk, but the company that developed the technology looks set to lose its monopoly to the new kid on the block. Micron Technology, one of the world’s largest semiconductor memory producers, plans to manufacture CompactFlash from 1997, and will support both 3.3V and 5V systems. More manufacturers are shortly expected to follow suit.
