 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer hardware |
| Founded | Kfar Saba, Israel 1989 (1989) |
| Founder | Dov Moran and Aryeh Mergi[1][2] |
| Defunct | November 19, 2006 (2006-11-19) |
| Fate | Acquired bySanDisk |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Dov Moran, Aryeh MergiFounders |
| Products | DiskOnKey DiskOnChip |
M-Systems Ltd., (sometimes spelledmsystems[3]) was aNasdaq-listedIsraeli producer offlash memory storage products founded in 1989 byDov Moran and Aryeh Mergi,[1][2] based inKfar Saba, Israel. They were best known for developing and patenting the firstflash drive, marketed in 1995 asDiskOnChip, and the firstUSB flash drive, marketed in 2000 asDiskOnKey. They also created the patentedTrue Flash Filing System (TrueFFS) which presented the flash memory as a disk drive to the computer.[4] They also produced flashsolid state drives forPATA,SATA,SCSI andSAS interfaces.[5] After 17 years of business, they were acquired by their prior competitor,SanDisk, in 2006.[3]The DiskOnChip (DOC) 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 2 MB 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 was a small Flash memory device encased in a plasticenclosure with an integratedflash controller that connected to theUSBport on acomputer. It required no separate power ordevice drivers from the computer if runningWindows 2000, orWindows ME; it was a trueplug and play device. InWindows 98 it required a driver which was supplied on aCD-ROM.[6] The computer saw the device as ahard disk drive and it came in capacities of 8, 16, and 32 MB. It was marketed as a hard disk on a keychain. It had an integratedLED 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.[7]
_-_board_-_M-Systems_DiskOnChip_Plus_MD2811-D32-V3_-2991.jpg)
The DiskOnChip (DoC) product line became popular because they could easily be integrated into smallembedded applications. The device was supplied as a module in a 32-pindual in-line package (DIP) with a pinout and electrical interface compatible with a standardJEDEC socket for memory chips. It employed amemory-mapped interface with an 8 KB window for models of all capacities (16 MB–1 GB). Internally, a DoC module contained a controller that implementedECC,bad block re-mapping andwear leveling functions that were used to implement a file system,TrueFFS, for which the company providedsoftware development kits.[8]
Some time after SanDisk acquired M-Systems, they announced theend-of-life for the DiskOnChip 2000 product line in early 2007,[9] suggesting customers migrate to the uDOC (uDiskOnChip Embedded USB Flash Disk) product,CompactFlash, orSecureDigital cards, all of which are not directly compatible, requiring interface redesign. The subsidiary of M-Systems called EUROM was established to design, build and sell the DOC to the U.S. and Asian embedded computer distributors. The first customer for the DOC wasAmpro. David Feldman, President of Ampro and Rick Iorillo, President of EUROM U.S. completed the first deal with IBM to supply 2MB embedded flash drives for recording transportation data on public buses in South America.
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[10] in 1995. This software and initially the Flash memory fromToshiba 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 2 MB chip. The DiskOnChip was made to work with TFFS and was able to bypass theBIOS by disabling the F000 address in the advanceCMOS 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 established with IBM and Brazil to help in capturing the data off the public transportation systems.[4]
IBM 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 MB, more than five times the capacity of the then-commonfloppy disks.[6]
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,Samsung and M-Systems announced a cooperative agreement between them that would combine the SamsungNAND flash memory technology with the M-Systems'TrueFFS controller.[4]
As early as 1998, Toshiba and M-Systems signed mutual agreements to develop and market a number of products for which Toshiba was asole source. 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.[4]
The relationship withSaifun Semiconductors included aUS$10 million investment from M-Systems (25% of the total funding Saifun raised) to build products around Saifun'sNROM technology.[4]
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.[4] Ultimately M-Systems was acquired by SanDisk for an all-stock transaction worth US$1.55 billion. A definitive agreement was announced on July 30, 2006, for SanDisk to acquire M-Systems, and on November 19, 2006, theacquisition was complete.[3]