SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.) has announced a new Flash storage option for the embedded market, the ATA-Disk Chip (ADC), which the company claims represents the industry's first ATA Flash drive in a common 32-pin DIP IC package. Since the ADC mimics normal IDE drives, from both a hardware and software perspective, designing embedded Linux systems with it should be simple.

But be warned: the ADC's 32-pin DIP pinout signal assignment is based on IDE drive connector signals, and bears therefore *NO* relation to the well known JEDEC standard for 32-pin memory devices. In other words, don't plug this device into an existing byte-wide memory device socket on a motherboard or embedded PC SBC! Nor is the device compatible with M-Systems' popular DiskOnChip products, which also come in 32-pin DIP packaging, but which CAN plug into ordinary EPROM/Flash/RAM byte-wide sockets.

Like CompactFlash cards, the SST ADC chips are equivalent to functionality complete IDE hard disk drives. Accordingly, the ADC chip has a built-in microcontroller and file management firmware that supports the ATA interface standard. Because the ADC supports the standard ATA software protocols, the host system does not require additional or proprietary software, such as Flash File System (FFS) or Memory Technology Drivers (MTD). This is especially valuable with Linux which, due to its GPL status, can complicate the use of proprietary software technology associated with devices used to boot the system.

The ADC provides a write protect pin, which can be toggled to protect contents from undesired erasure or over-write. The initial 32-pin packaged DIP devices are available in capacities ranging from 8 to 64 MBytes, and are offered in both 5.0V and 3.3V versions. Additional package styles as well as higher density offerings will follow. The ADC contains SST's proprietary Flash controller, combined with a NAND Flash memory component manufactured by a memory technology partner.

 
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