Cornice, a Colorado-based manufacturer of data storage devices, has introduced a tiny new 2-gigabyte “storage element” for use in low-cost portable applications.
About one-inch in size, the 2.0 GB SE has the capacity to hold 40 CDs worth of MP3 music, three hours of VHS-quality MPEG digital video, 100 video games, or 180 four-megapixel professional-quality digital camera images.
Shown for the first time at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show, the new Storage Element (SE) ups the capacity of a previous 1.5 GB model introduced last year. It sells for less than $70 in high quantities.
About one-inch in size, the 2.0 GB SE has the capacity to hold 40 CDs worth of MP3 music, three hours of VHS-quality MPEG digital video, 100 video games, or 180 four-megapixel professional-quality digital camera images.
Cornice said the new SE delivers the speed and capacity of small disk drives, the low battery usage of solid-state storage media, and durability that withstands a one-meter drop onto bare concrete — all at the lowest cost in the industry.
The design, said the company, has radically fewer parts than competing products, for reduced cost and small size. It has fewer than 35 electronic components and three integrated circuits, compared to the 110 components and six integrated circuits in competitive storage products.
Though the SE shares some architectural kinship with hard drives — it features a spinning platter and a read/write head — the SE is not a drive. Hard drives feature elaborate caching and buffering mechanisms to serve the needs of PCs and servers. These have been stripped from the SE since they are not necessary in consumer electronics. In addition, other components that are typically found in drives are not included in the SE’s design.
In addition to enabling devices to store more music, video, and pictures, Cornice sees new products for office productivity files such as presentations and word processing documents, continent-inclusive GPS devices, multi-function handheld computers, and other emerging product that need high-capacity portable storage.
For more information visit www.corniceco.com.
