M-Systems
Encyclopedia
M-Systems Ltd., was a Nasdaq
-listed Israel
i producer of Flash memory
storage products founded in 1989 by Dov Moran
and based in Kfar Sava, Israel. They were best known for developing and patenting the first flash drive
, marketed in 1995 as DiskOnChip, and the first USB flash drive
, marketed in 1999 as DiskOnKey. They also created the patented True Flash Filing System (TrueFFS) which presented the flash memory as a disk drive to the computer. After 17 years of business, they were acquired by their prior competitor, SanDisk
, in 2006.
The DiskOnChip was developed at the R&D Center established by M-Systems called EUROM. Rick Iorillo, Rony Levy and David Deitcher were the individuals that worked on the development and marketing of the first 2MB DOC. This product went on to receive the Most Innovative Award from EDN in 1995 and later went on to become the Flash Drive and DiskOnKey.
with an integrated Flash memory controller that connected to the USB port
on a computer
. It required no separate power or device driver
s from the computer if running Windows 2000
, or Windows ME
; it was a true plug and play device. In Windows 98
it required a driver which was supplied on a CD-ROM
. The computer saw the device as a hard disk drive and it came in capacities of 8, 16, and 32 MBs. It was marketed as a hard disk on a keychain. It had an integrated LED
which indicated when the device was reading or writing data to prevent premature removal from the computer. The performance was about 10 times faster than writing data to a floppy drive.
(DIP) with a pinout and electrical interface compatible with a standard JEDEC socket
for memory chips. It employed a memory-mapped
interface with an 8 kibibyte
(KB) window for models of all capacities (16 MB–1 GB). Internally, a DoC module contained a controller that implemented ECC, bad block re-mapping
and wear leveling
functions that were used to implement a file system, TrueFFS, for which the company provided software development kit
s.
Some time after SanDisk acquired M-Systems, they announced the end-of-life (EOL) for the DiskOnChip 2000 product line in early 2007, suggesting customers migrate to the uDOC (uDiskOnChip Embedded USB Flash Disk) product, CompactFlash
, or SecureDigital cards, all of which are not directly compatible, requiring interface redesign.
were combined to form the first solid state storage product called DiskOnChip. The DiskOnChip was first designed for the Single Board Computer manufacturers and was a 2MB chip. The DiskOnChip was made to work with TFFS and was able to bypass the BIOS by disabling the F000 address in the advance CMOS setup. Rick Iorillo lead the development and design efforts in the U.S. and established the first distributor base for the sale of the 28 pin DIP with Ampro being the first customer in the U.S. Sales of the DOC were establish with IBM and Brazil to help in capturing the data off the public transportation systems.
was the first to market USB flash drives in North America, purchasing them from M-Systems and selling them under the IBM-brand label. These USB flash drives became available from IBM on December 15, 2000, and had a storage capacity of 8 megabytes (MBs), more than five times the capacity of the then-common floppy disk
s.
and M-Systems announced a cooperative agreement between them that would combine the Samsung NAND
Flash memory technology with the M-Systems' TrueFFS controller.
. Toshiba agreed to supply a specific portion of its Flash memory capacity to M-Systems in 2003. This included an investment by Toshiba in M-Systems.
10 million investment from M-Systems (25% of the total funding Saifun raised) to build products around Saifun's NROM technology.
was complete.
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
-listed Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i producer of Flash memory
Flash memory
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...
storage products founded in 1989 by Dov Moran
Dov Moran
Dov Moran is an Israeli engineer, inventor and businessman.Moran obtained a Bachelor of Science at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology....
and based in Kfar Sava, Israel. They were best known for developing and patenting the first flash drive
Solid-state drive
A solid-state drive , sometimes called a solid-state disk or electronic disk, is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data with the intention of providing access in the same manner of a traditional block i/o hard disk drive...
, marketed in 1995 as DiskOnChip, and the first USB flash drive
USB flash drive
A flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...
, marketed in 1999 as DiskOnKey. They also created the patented True Flash Filing System (TrueFFS) which presented the flash memory as a disk drive to the computer. After 17 years of business, they were acquired by their prior competitor, SanDisk
SanDisk
SanDisk Corporation is an American multinational corporation that designs, develops and manufactures data storage solutions in a range of form factors using the flash memory, controller and firmware technologies. It was founded in 1988 by Dr. Eli Harari and Sanjay Mehrotra, non-volatile memory...
, in 2006.
The DiskOnChip was developed at the R&D Center established by M-Systems called EUROM. Rick Iorillo, Rony Levy and David Deitcher were the individuals that worked on the development and marketing of the first 2MB DOC. This product went on to receive the Most Innovative Award from EDN in 1995 and later went on to become the Flash Drive and DiskOnKey.
DiskOnKey
DiskOnKey was a small Flash memory device encased in a plastic enclosureEnclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales the term is also used for the...
with an integrated Flash memory controller that connected to the USB port
Computer port (hardware)
In computer hardware, a port serves as an interface between the computer and other computers or peripheral devices. Physically, a port is a specialized outlet on a piece of equipment to which a plug or cable connects...
on a computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
. It required no separate power or device driver
Device driver
In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
s from the computer if running Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
, or Windows ME
Windows Me
Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me , is a graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft, and was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series. Support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006....
; it was a true plug and play device. In Windows 98
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
it required a driver which was supplied on a CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
. The computer saw the device as a hard disk drive and it came in capacities of 8, 16, and 32 MBs. It was marketed as a hard disk on a keychain. It had an integrated LED
LEd
LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....
which indicated when the device was reading or writing data to prevent premature removal from the computer. The performance was about 10 times faster than writing data to a floppy drive.
DiskOnChip
The DiskOnChip (DoC) product line became popular because they could easily be integrated into small embedded applications. The device was supplied as a module in a 32-pin dual in-line packageDual in-line package
In microelectronics, a dual in-line package is an electronic device package with a rectangular housing and two parallel rows of electrical connecting pins. The package may be through-hole mounted to a printed circuit board or inserted in a socket.A DIP is usually referred to as a DIPn, where n is...
(DIP) with a pinout and electrical interface compatible with a standard JEDEC socket
JEDEC memory standards
The JEDEC memory standards are the specifications for semiconductor memory circuits and similar storage devices promulgated by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, a semiconductor trade and engineering standardization organization....
for memory chips. It employed a memory-mapped
Memory mapping
In computing, memory mapping may refer to:* Memory-mapped file, also known as mmap* Memory-mapped I/O, an alternative to port I/O; a communication between CPU and peripheral device using the same instructions, and same bus, as between CPU and memory...
interface with an 8 kibibyte
Kibibyte
The kibibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for quantities of digital information. The binary prefix kibi means 1024; therefore, 1 kibibyte is . The unit symbol for the kibibyte is KiB. The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1999 and has been accepted for use...
(KB) window for models of all capacities (16 MB–1 GB). Internally, a DoC module contained a controller that implemented ECC, bad block re-mapping
Bad Sector
Bad Sector is an ambient/noise project formed in 1992 in Tuscany, Italy by Massimo Magrini. While working at the Computer Art Lab of ISTI in Pisa , he developed original gesture interfaces that he uses in live performances: 'Aerial Painting Hand' , 'UV-Stick' Bad Sector is an ambient/noise...
and wear leveling
Wear leveling
Wear leveling is a technique for prolonging the service life of some kinds of erasable computer storage media, such as Flash memory used in solid-state drives and USB Flash drives...
functions that were used to implement a file system, TrueFFS, for which the company provided software development kit
Software development kit
A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...
s.
Some time after SanDisk acquired M-Systems, they announced the end-of-life (EOL) for the DiskOnChip 2000 product line in early 2007, suggesting customers migrate to the uDOC (uDiskOnChip Embedded USB Flash Disk) product, CompactFlash
CompactFlash
CompactFlash is a mass storage device format used in portable electronic devices. Most CompactFlash devices contain flash memory in a standardized enclosure. The format was first specified and produced by SanDisk in 1994...
, or SecureDigital cards, all of which are not directly compatible, requiring interface redesign.
TrueFFS
The software that made the computer see the Flash memory as a disk drive was called TrueFFS and it was awarded US patent No. 5404485 in 1995. This software and initially the Flash memory from ToshibaToshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
were combined to form the first solid state storage product called DiskOnChip. The DiskOnChip was first designed for the Single Board Computer manufacturers and was a 2MB chip. The DiskOnChip was made to work with TFFS and was able to bypass the BIOS by disabling the F000 address in the advance CMOS setup. Rick Iorillo lead the development and design efforts in the U.S. and established the first distributor base for the sale of the 28 pin DIP with Ampro being the first customer in the U.S. Sales of the DOC were establish with IBM and Brazil to help in capturing the data off the public transportation systems.
IBM
IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
was the first to market USB flash drives in North America, purchasing them from M-Systems and selling them under the IBM-brand label. These USB flash drives became available from IBM on December 15, 2000, and had a storage capacity of 8 megabytes (MBs), more than five times the capacity of the then-common floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
s.
Samsung
M-Systems did not produce the Flash memory used in their devices. Instead they worked closely with other Flash memory manufacturers to use multiple suppliers of memory. In July 1996 SamsungSamsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...
and M-Systems announced a cooperative agreement between them that would combine the Samsung NAND
Nand
NAND may stand for:*Nand , an Indian classical raga.*Logical NAND , a binary operation in logic.**NAND gate, an electronic gate that implements a logical NAND....
Flash memory technology with the M-Systems' TrueFFS controller.
Toshiba
As early as 1998, Toshiba and M-Systems signed mutual agreements to develop and market a number of products for which Toshiba was a sole sourceMonopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
. Toshiba agreed to supply a specific portion of its Flash memory capacity to M-Systems in 2003. This included an investment by Toshiba in M-Systems.
Saifun Semiconductors
The relationship with Saifun Semiconductors included a US$United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
10 million investment from M-Systems (25% of the total funding Saifun raised) to build products around Saifun's NROM technology.
SanDisk
M-systems was competing in the flash market with SanDisk, but the introduction of the USB drive made a cooperative environment more financially advantageous. In 2004 the two companies entered into a strategic agreement with cross licensing of patents to develop new USB drive platforms introduced in 2005. Ultimately M-Systems was acquired by SanDisk for an all stock transaction worth $1.55 billion. A definitive agreement was announced on July 30, 2006, for SanDisk to acquire M-Systems, and on November 19, 2006, the acquisitionTakeover
In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company by another . In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to the acquisition of a private company.- Friendly takeovers :Before a bidder makes an offer for another...
was complete.