Thanks Phaedrus, I agree with you one has to look at it on a total cost basis, but my conclusion is different then yours. I warned in my previous post I could not be comprehensive in comparing both technologies.
Please let me add a few things in this respect :
Compatibility
Both ATA and FTL are FORMAL PCMCIA standards. The ATA has been a
standard for a longer period than FTL, and therefore is currently more
widespread in the market.
Since the adoption of FTL as a PCMCIA standard it has gained
tremendously wide industry support. M-Systems signed a distribution
agreement with Phoenix Technologies and with SystemSoft Corp. In
addition to this, FTL has been supported for a long time by GeoWorks and it has been incorporated into Windows 95 and Windows CE. FTL is thus already available in every PCMCIA socket.
Platform
FTL has been available on the market for more than 4 years, and is a
mature and stable technology. A partial list of operating systems which FTL supports is shown below and represents a major portion of the shipped systems:
Microsoft DOS, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows CE, NEC OS, GEOS pSOS, QNX, VxWorks, OS-9, Windows NT, Apple System 7 and Venix are operating systems currently supported by FTL.
Microtec has licensed M-Systems' TrueFFS(R) Flash File System for use
with the VRTX RTOS. Giving 80x86 and Pentium embedded developers even
greater design flexibility, TrueFFS for VRTX enables embedded 80x86
designers to more easily integrate flash memory into real-time embedded applications.
Wind River Systems Inc. (WIND) and M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Inc. (FLSHF) Thursday jointly launched TrueFFS for Tornado, an integrated flash file system for Wind River's Tornado embedded products development environment. The TrueFFS for Tornado component will be available directly from Wind River Systems for all UNIX, Windows 95 and Windows NT host platforms.
FTL is also supported on OS-less environments by M-Systems'
revolutionary FTL-Lite product which provides full support and
interoperability for environments where a standard OS is not available
such as 8051, Z80 and all 8/16/32/64 CPU architectures.
FTL is fully compatible with ALL available BIOS' on the market. It is
supplied today by the two major BIOS/PCMCIA suppliers in the market -
SystemSoft and Phoenix.
FTL is a PCMCIA standard and it is going to be supplied by all the rest of the BIOS vendors (otherwise they will not be PCMCIA compatible).
Software vs Hardware
The software controller, which is not slower than the hardware controller (100% sure), it's even faster, costs a few cents to the owner of the platform, thus to the end-users. It's being licensed at very low cost (almost freely) in order to expand the platform for FTL as much as possible. Now, it's available on almost every PC (for DCs and handheld organizers' purposes) but more importantly on most platforms used in embedded computer systems.
Thus you will understand that CF will always be more expensive to the OEM than FTL since Linear flash cards are a lot less expensive than CF, that's quite obvious IMHO.
>>In addition, CF will always be backwards and forwards compatible because of the controller<<
You're right, currently one cannot be 100% sure that its Miniature Card will be readable on his PC (Compaq bios, Windows 3.1,...). But soon, it's gonna be close to that figure.
M-Systems' DiskOnChip 2000
FTL is currently being adopted as THE standard for Internet appliances. You know why? This is one important point I forgot to mention.
M-Systems' breathtaking DOC 2000 (Yeah I'm proud to own some stock of this company but it's no hype, check this out) :
The DiskOnChip 2000, announced earlier this year as part of the Best
Performance, Best Price Series 2000 Flash Disks, is a 32-pin DIP single chip bootable Flash Disk that provides full hard disk compatibility, high performance, cost effectiveness, and extreme reliability for Embedded Systems and applications with limited space and modest disk capacity requirements. The DiskOnChip is offered in capacities of 2-72 MBytes, with future models having capacities of 144 MByte and up- all this in a package smaller than a match box. The closest chip set solutions from other vendors provide only 8 MBytes, making the DiskOnChip 2000 the superior solution in terms of density, performance and cost.
Since its introduction, the DiskOnChip 2000 has been shipping in large
quantities, and has been designed into the Embedded PC mother boards of all the leading SBC manufacturers in the world. Cutting integration
costs, saving space and power consumption, the DiskOnChip offers the
optimal solution for mother boards used in many applications: Set-top
boxes, Diskless Network Computers, Internet appliances, DVD and CD-Video players and recorders.
To fully explain how this is a breakthrough technology :
When connecting the DiskOnChip 2000 EVB to a PC, the system works
automatically, without the need of any software integration. The
DiskOnChip is automatically configured as a system disk drive with full hard disk functionality. The DiskOnChip 2000 and the EVB enable the system to boot from the DiskOnChip 2000 when the DiskOnChip is
functioning as the primary system disk, i.e. the DOC contains the system software, i.e. the BIOS. It can even store the operating system and boot e.g. Windows CE(R) or Windows 95(R)!, in addition it can store application programs and data files (on the single 32-pin device!), thus completely replace hard disk drives in many applications, especially embedded systems.
The DiskOnChip2000 provides a technology-independent architecture with full backward and forward compatibility.
The DiskOnChip2000 provides plug'n'play capability without a need for an external software driver. It employs Flash Translation Layer (NFTL) firmware, TrueFFS(R).
The DiskOnChip2000 has been shipping for more than 6 months, in quantity. The 8 MByte version was priced at $67 (10,000 pieces).
Good digestion,
Good investing,
Jerome |
