FREMONT, Calif. — (press release) — M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd. announced today that DiskOnChip 2000 products are being upgraded to an advanced flash 0.21 micron process technology. Additionally, the internal flash file system technology, known as TrueFFS, is being upgraded to a new version (4.1 and 1.23 for DOS) in order to support the change and provide new features.

Yigal Ben-Zeev, DiskOnChip product line director, said “this new technology increases the capacity of the flash media, allowing for new products and sizes.” DiskOnChip is now available in 64MB and 96MB capacities in low profile and in 160MB, 192MB and 288MB capacities in high profile.

Asked if the new devices would be compatible with existing Linux support, a company spokesperson replied “This assumption is true but these new drivers are the same ones we released last year for the DiskOnChip Millennium and the higher capacity DiskOnChip 2000's. We addressed this situation by updating our drivers in all the major Operating Systems so this issue should have already been addressed for the Linux OS.”

The new smaller geometries are expected to reduce costs and increase available capacities. “Since more flash dies are now produced from each wafer, production capacity should be increased and we expect improved delivery lead time from our vendors”, said Amir Ban, vice president of research and development, M-Systems Ltd. “With this release, we will push DiskOnChip capacities even higher using state of the art flash technology and provide our users with valuable new features including data security and access control,” continued Ban. “We expect to be able to double DiskOnChip capacities yet again before the end of the year,” Ban added.

M-Systems also says the new TrueFFS software provides improved wear leveling. TrueFFS 4.1 supports a new Application Program Interface (API), provided through an Input Output Control (IOCTL) interface for extended services. New features include: media write protect with password protection; defrag operation to enable improved write performance by pre-erasing flash area; an info inquiry command that provides information about media type, state, driver version and other useful information; flash media physical access API; boot development kit (boot partition) access API; and remount.

 
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