The company's µampsDiskOnChip devices will start shipping by the end of this year at 512 Mbyte densities and hit a Gbyte using Toshiba's multi-level cell technology by the middle of 2004.

The new products will feature increases in performance, reliability and security over existing flash disks thanks to a redesigned ASIC on the flash module, said Noam Kedem, a vice president of marketing for M-Systems (Newark, Calif.).

The µampsDiskOnChip will execute average read data transfers at 9 Mbytes/second and writes at 7 Mbytes/second. A fifth generation product in the works for 2004 will significantly boost those transfer rates, Kedem said.

The ASIC device will be the first to include a security co-processor block from the company's Fortress Security division, a leading supplier of security technology to smart card makers. The block supports DES and 3DES encryption, SHA-1 hashing for digital signatures and RSA key exchange and authentication.

In terms of reliability, the device has hardware support for error detection and correction and it supplies the company's TrueFFS file system software built in to its firmware.

M-Systems worked with unidentified single-board computer makers to define a new 2x9-pin internal USB 2.0 connector to provide stronger anchoring and support yet-to-be disclosed future features. The company plans to propose the physical interface as a standard, but has not take it to the USB Implementers Forum yet.

M-Systems will price the devices on par with its top competition, CompactFlash modules which currently sell for about 30 cents/Mbyte or about $150 for a 512 Mbyte module, Kedem estimated. "We will have no price premium over CompactFlash, but we will offer more features," he added.

M-Systems has about ten competitors in the USB flash disk market it helped define back in 1999 with its DiskOnKey product. "We are going after two or three of these competitors in court to enforce our intellectual property and expect to do the same in the embedded market if that is needed. Competition is fierce," said Kedem.

By: DocMemory
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