A new initiative to define a storage interface targeting the needs of handheld and portable consumer electronic devices was announced today by Intel, Hitachi, Marvell, Seagate, and Toshiba.

The companies intend to jointly define a standard interface for small form factor disk drives that addresses the requirements of the handheld and consumer electronics (CE) market segments, including low pin count, low voltage, power efficiency, cost effectiveness and integration efficiency.

The specification is scheduled to be completed in the first half of 2005. The first end products supporting the new technology could be available several months thereafter, a statement said.