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To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (36736)	4/12/2002 4:55:16 AM
From: Johnny Canuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 68046

This is a private company but the technology is worth keeping an eye on. ****************** M-Systems Develops Secure Storage Chips for Mobile Handsets By Alex Romanelli, Electronic News Online -- Electronic News, 4/10/2002 M-Systems Inc. today entered the mobile phone arena with a secure storage chip designed for next-generation cell phone handsets. The company said its Mobile DiskOnChip product offers 10 to 15 times the performance of competing flash storage products, and at half the size. "We think the handset is transitioning from the simple phone to something more feature-rich," said Chuck Schouw, president and CEO of M-Systems. "Hence that means more data storage. We emulate hard disk drive functionality with semiconductors. You have the functionality of a hard disk drive and the speed of semiconductors." The Mobile DiskOnChip products come in configurations of 16-, 32- and 64Mbytes. They are fully cascadable, allowing up to four parts to be linked together, creating a potential 256Mbyte storage capacity inside a mobile phone. Schouw firmly believes storage capacity will become an increasingly important in handsets as multimedia 3G applications begin to roll out. Music, video and gaming features become a viable possibility for cell phones with increased capacity, he said. Data is stored locally on-chip, negating the need to synchronize the handset with an outside source. Most handsets use NOR-based flash memory. M-Systems, instead, uses an enhanced NAND flash memory. "NOR flash is pervasive in mobile phones," Schouw said. "NOR is a great storage technology but its not a complete device. Speed is very important when you use your phone. We use NAND flash, which is faster for data storage than NOR storage. We think it’s the ideal data storage element; write speeds are significantly faster. NOR is in the seconds. NAND is in the milliseconds." NAND flash in itself is a good storage medium but not a good storage device, Schouw said. The company has therefore developed software-based IP to overcome some of the issues with NAND and to perform functions like error detection and correction. The enhanced NAND is also built on a 16-bit interface making it faster than regular 8-bit NAND, the company said. The device includes a small SRAM that gives the products integrated boot functionality, which the company calls eXecute In Place (XIP). This reduces overall costs by doing away with an external boot-ROM, Schouw said. "Contrary to CompactFlash and other removable media which are using NAND, the controller is not managing the media," said Arie Tal, marketing manager of Mobile DiskOnChip. "The controller is only doing what it must do, which is error detection and correction. We’ve removed the headache of working with NAND, which means not working with an I/O interface but working with an SRAM interface. This gives us a very low cost structure compared to other NAND-based alternatives. Of course there is a small premium over regular NAND but if you take also into account the XIP block, the total cost of ownership is much lower." The Mobile DiskOnChip technology has also been designed to provide hardware security for both OEMs and consumers. This feature is part of the silicon and not managed by software. The OEM is free to decide how much of the chip’s capacity should be protected, both by itself and also by the consumer. This allows consumers a separate secure area to store private, personal information, such as financial or medical data. The OS hardware protected area can only be managed with OEM password access. This could be done remotely, allowing for upgrades within the field. "It gives the OEM the security of not having its OS corrupted, and making sure applications are not going to be put on it," Schouw said. "The end user wants his private information protected. That security is on the silicon. Our competitors do not really have that." The Mobile DiskOnChip devices are being fabbed by M-Systems’ silicon partner Toshiba Corp. at 0.16-micron. The chips are housed in an industry-standard BGA package. The 16Mbyte device is available now, with mass production for it and the 32Mbyte device scheduled for next month. The 64Mbyte part will ship in October. Schouw said the next step is to develop a 128Mbyte part and to further reduce costs. This strategy is currently tied to the company’s choice of enhanced NAND, but Schouw is not afraid to move on to better technologies. "Our software allows us to use any flash technology, so we’ll always use the best cost performance technology available. Today we think its NAND but there are other technologies coming down the road which could be, if they work, a better-cost performance equation. In the short term we’re going to multi-level NAND. Right now its 1-bit per cell, we want to go to 2-bits per cell. That will significantly reduce the cost of the silicon. Down the road should a better technology come along, we’ll switch to that." e-insite.net