Jim and INTC Investors - Intel StrataFlash with Window's CE article.
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Intel Moving Into Windows CE With StrataFlash
(06/04/99, 3:26 p.m. ET)
By Andrew MacLellan, Electronic Buyers' News
Intel is infiltrating the Windows CE hardware market with its StrataFlash flash-memory technology, and will receive important support next week from Microsoft that could open doors to a number of emerging applications.
Intel expects its Persistent Storage Manager (PSM) software, which is to be released at this week's Windows CE Developers Conference in Denver, to spark the same level of interest within the set-top-box and handheld-PC markets that its Flash Data Integrator (FDI) software has evoked in the cell-phone arena.
By providing the kind of flash-memory code and data partitioning it offers to cell-phone makers, Intel said it can eliminate the need for mask ROM, removable flash-storage cards, and most battery-backed DRAM from a range of handheld PCs and mini-notebooks.
"Where FDI takes EEPROM and combines that with flash memory, [PSM] does the same thing in terms of integrating multiple functions in a single chip," said Curt Nichols, director of marketing at Intel's flash-memory components division.
In addition to saving real estate by cutting as many as five components from a typical handheld-PC design, Intel said the use of flash provides field programmability, which mask ROM does not; reliable nonvolatile storage, an area in which battery-backed DRAM has its failings; and 8 to 32 Mbytes of storage space that will at least postpone the need for removable flash cards.
What's more, with Windows CE evolving from a handheld-computer OS into a real-time OS supporting Internet and satellite set-top boxes, system designers' needs are changing, said Greg Komoto, marketing manager at Intel's flash division.
By replacing existing storage components with flash memory able to store both code and data, cable and Internet service providers can avoid the cost and time of service calls by embedding system registry files in each box and deploying application upgrades remotely.
"Intel [PSM] is a great example of how flash memory can be optimized for use in applications using Windows CE," said Tony Barbagallo, Windows CE group product manager at Microsoft.
Illustrating the potential of these new applications for the discrete-flash market, analyst Alan Niebel of Semico Research said combined shipments of palmtop and "clamshell" handheld computers will total more than 6 million units this year, and more than 14 million in 2001. The two markets are expected to generate unit shipments of nearly 1.3 million flash-storage cards this year and more than 13 million in 2001 -- an area in which Intel's so-called resident flash chips could begin to make headway.
"[Intel's approach] does open up the market for PalmPilots, WinCE subnotebooks, and PDAs," Niebel said. "Those markets will continue to grow. Internet appliances will be a ready market for flash."
Intel's PSM software supports the company's StrataFlash technology, which stores two bits of data in each memory cell. Like FDI, the PSM software allows users to store both data and program code in the same flash device, enabling the simultaneous reading and programming of system memory, databases, registry files, OS code, drivers, and libraries.
While Intel claims the more elegant software-based approach will enable smaller, lighter-weight products with longer battery life and greater data integrity, the technology does have drawbacks, observers said. The read-access speeds of flash are in the same ballpark as those of DRAM, but flash chips take longer to program. At 64 Mbits, Intel's PSM StrataFlash completes a read cycle in 150 nanoseconds and executes a write command in about 6 ms, Komoto said.
Intel claims it can improve this by using a small amount of DRAM or SRAM as scratch-pad memory. "Instead of having a bank of four DRAMs in your system, you have a single DRAM," Komoto said.
Because it is offered as a 5-V-only part, Intel's StrataFlash is also limited by its power consumption. But by introducing 3-V StrataFlash later this month and eliminating most of the system DRAM, Intel said it will nearly double the battery life of an average handheld PC to 17 days or more.
Intel will license the software free to its flash-memory customers, and will charge a royalty to OEMs that use the software with competing flash chips.The PSM software is slated for production release in the fourth quarter. |
