We here at Datalight are seeing a lot of interest in this weeks “Software Perspective on eMMC” presentation, across a broad spectrum. This is apparently a pretty hot topic!

If you are interested in joining us, seats are still available – http://www.datalight.com/welcome/web-seminar-switching-to-emmc

A recent article by Doug Wong compared performance characteristics of eMMC and ONFI specification EZ-NAND, specifically Toshiba’s SmartNAND here: http://www.eetimes.com/design/memory-design/4218886

One consideration I would add to this quite excellent summary is about the availability of drivers. Raw NAND has been around for quite a while and the market supplies a large range of drivers. Many of these will utilize the basic functionality of SmartNAND and other EZ NAND chips with only small modifications. Drivers for eMMC, on the other hand, are much harder to find. Only Linux has a freely available driver, which Google’s Android has taken advantage of in recent releases.

At Datalight, we continue to be excited by both of these new technologies. From the JEDEC eMMC parts, the cool features such as Secure Delete and Replay Protected Memory Block are very exciting. On the other hand, the sheer performance of Toshiba’s SmartNAND and other EZ NAND solutions is very much in demand.

The hot topics in the consumer electronics segments today are Android, installable applications, sexy user interfaces, sensors like GPS receivers, gyroscopes and accelerometers and larger capacity/smaller size storage. Ever since I read Roy’s blog post on CES, I’ve been asking myself when we’ll start seeing the impact of trends in consumer electronics on the more general embedded market. Just as buying a car causes you to see that model everywhere, it seems like asking the question has made it so. In the past few weeks we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of customers considering a move from traditional RTOS’s to Linux – more specifically, Android. Many are in the “tire kicking” stage and may never make the switch, but the tide has clearly turned in that direction. The appeal seems to be a combination of user interface – which becomes more important as data use, which has also taken a leap skyward on embedded devices, increases – and ease of application development, perhaps even leveraging the burgeoning application marketplaces that have developed around smartphones. Then again, much of what’s happening in the consumer electronics space is old hat in embedded systems: working in resource constrained environments, power efficiency and dealing with ruggedness requirements.

I guess the real migration is that consumer electronics are combining technologies proven in embedded into multifunction devices, smaller packages with slicker form factors to meet the trendy demands of consumers.

Learn more about Datalight for Linux

“To the Datalight team: I really appreciate the hard work, good technical feedback, and general professionalism. Thank you for your time and effort spent on this issue; for getting to the bottom of it (never doubted you would); and for getting us the patches so quickly. Outstanding support, as always!”

“The overall experience is very positive. Specifically, the sales person and the technical support team are very knowledgeable and helpful.”

“I wanted to express my appreciation for the dedication and hard work of Gary, Tony and the rest of the Datalight team on resolving this important issue.  This is a great example of Datalight’s professionalism, customer support ethic and the value we receive from Datalight.”

“I have been completely satisfied with Datalight. We are working on mission critical flight software for a spacecraft and the insight and support provided by Datalight has been exceptional.”

Read even more comments here

Our CEO Roy Sherrill visited CES last week and made note of a few trends that caught his eye. Here are his thoughts from the show floor:

All-in-one Devices – Over the last few years, we self-described technology geeks have seen our phone morph into a camera, an MP3 player, an internet connection/email  viewer, and about a hundred other functions spanning the range between the necessary and the ridiculous. In spite of all this convergence though, the sheer number of computers we rely on on a daily basis seems to be growing not shrinking – TV  set-top boxes, car navigation and media servers, work laptop, home laptop, tablet computer and so on.  How many devices do we really need to run our lives?  How do we keep all these computers synched and updated with the latest software? How do we organize and locate all the files we have stored on all these computers?

This year at CES, we saw manufacturers attempting to answer all these questions with another question: What if a single device could act as your laptop, cell phone, automotive computer, content viewing device, camera, and video server?

The convergence movement effort is not new. The first attempts involved terminal servers – one computer to contain all your data with internet access.  It was a good start, but not very practical beyond centralizing your work and home computers. Then, a few years ago the solution of data mobility via USB drive made an appearance – just plug in the USB drive into whichever computer was closest to you. Your application suite stayed on the USB drive so even your apps traveled with you. It was a nice idea, but the user still had to locate a computer, not always an easy task as anyone who travels for work will tell you.

Enter the Motorola Atrix. This smartphone was by far the coolest gadget I saw at CES this year, and represents Motorola’s attempt to retake lost marketshare since the heady first days of the RAZR. It contains two 1GHZ CPUs, 16GB of onboard storage, and room for additional media cards, and is designed to be used as a full computer by plugging it into a dumb terminal (actually a laptop-sized keyboard and screen). It also supports HDMI video output so it can drive a full-size HDTV. Could a phone double as your laptop, tablet, cell, camera, payment identification, automotive computer, and media server?  The Atrix is expected to be out in the first quarter of 2011, and cost has not yet been announced.

I’m anxious to see what kind of reception it gets.  The biggest issue I see with the Atrix in its current (prototypical) form is a lack of storage capacity. Even with Android’s relatively small footprint, 16GB + slots doesn’t leave a lot of room for performing the functions of a PC, media server, and all the other functions the device will be tasked with.  No doubt this is something the great minds at Motorola are tackling as I write this, so we will just have to wait and see what the final product looks like.

Full Laptop powered by the Atrix phone

Android – The OS that’s eating everybody’s lunch in the mobile world was everywhere at CES this year.   There are Android cell phones, Android tablets, Android TVs and too many other Android devices to recount.  The Android App store was both being sold in concept (“Soon there will even be an app for that too”), and actual specific applications to manage just about everything.  This was the year of Android at CES… well at least till next year!

3D – Everybody’s got it.   TV’s are the primary focus of 3D, but videogame makers are dipping their collective toes into the3D waters as well. The only question I had was; who’s going to shell out the bucks to have their friends laugh at those 1950s glasses?   3D is also coming to the smart phone arena with the use of special glasses that make the phones’ video appear to be displayed on a big screen nine feet away.  Some glasses are also wired for sound with ear pieces!

Cordless Power – There were several companies showing off their cordless power modules, capable of recharging devices without connecting a cable.  One that caught my eye was from Fulton Innovation, and provided not just power, but automatic detection and communication between the circuit being powered and the host.  Check out the picture below showing one possible application for this technology: a grocery shelf that is cordlessly powering lighted boxes of Cheerios. That’s right, the product name actually lights up on the box! In this imagined scenario, the communications component also helps with inventory control and tells the store how many boxes are on the shelf. Fulton’s other examples included a kitchen counter with multiple cordless appliances and an electric car powered by a charging element in the garage floor.

Pictures and video on cordless power -including the illuminated Cheerios box!

Telematics – If the displays at CES are any indication, Ford’s Sync appears to be the king of the hill in automotive computing today.  Ford Synch is powered by Microsoft’s Sync platform with voice commands, navigation, entertainment, car management, and more.   One Ex-Ford engineer I spoke to at the show remarked that he was amazed at Fords progress in this area. When he worked at Ford in 2000, he said management did not seem open to innovation in automotive computing.

Ford’s new display

New advances in heads-up display (culled from 80s-era military programs) were also displayed at the show.  The technology allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road and view the dashboard information directly on the windshield.  This latest version of heads-up technology is expected to be available in a year or two.

Hyundai’s Blue Link had a good showing at CES.   I was not able to tell much difference between it and the Ford product that many say is top of the line.   A Hyundai Blue Link is shown below.

Dovetailing nicely with the aforementioned Motorola Atrix, Hyundai also demonstrated the concept of an Android cell phone providing the Telematics solution, with specialized apps for Hyundai car management. Among the benefits of using a personal device to do automotive computing is that when you drive another car, your music, maps, address book and possibly driving/comfort adjustments would travel with you (e.g., moving the seat and steering column and adjusting the car’s temperature could be app-controlled).

Hundai’s Blue Link page

Other Stuff

Live music is required for any good event!

Sand Castles are always a hit at events, especially when you need to take pictures of stuff!

RIM was pitching the Play book!

Picture of the Play book!

JEDEC, the Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (see http://www.jedec.org), is a group of manufacturers and suppliers collaborating to create specifications for Flash memory access and parts. The current revision of their specification for Embedded MultiMedia Cards, eMMC, is 4.41, and is available on the website above.

I’m excited to be a part of Datalight and JEDEC, and am looking forward to the upcoming eMMC 4.5 and UFS 1.0 specifications. Datalight is not in the business of manufacturing hardware, of course, but our file system products like to work closely with the underlying driver. Until those products are fully eMMC 4.5 compliant, what can you expect?

The most fundamental thing a Reliance file system needs is a block device that writes data when it says it will. Any data left in a cache or not flushed upon command could be lost data in an unexpected power loss. The Enhanced Reliable Write feature means any eMMC 4.41 or 4.5 flash part will work perfectly with Reliance and Reliance Nitro.

The High Priority Interrupt feature of eMMC basically means that a block device write might pause, reporting back only a partial write. This is fully supported in the Reliance Nitro file system, which will then loop back and continue the write after the HPI is complete.

The Trim feature of eMMC 4.4.1 is being replaced by a Discard feature in eMMC 4.5. The latter fits in more closely with the way Reliance interacts with our own FlashFX product.

Basic functionality (Read, Write, and Erase) is of course supported, and full compliance with eMMC 4.5 is on Datalight’s roadmap, so keep an eye out here for more news soon.

Today we released our newest version of RWD (Reliance Windows Driver) with support for Windows 7. This is very good news for manufacturers and users of devices that need exchangeability with a Windows desktop, but can’t or won’t compromise performance and reliability to get it. As Windows 7 is enjoying much stronger adoption than Vista, we anticipate strong demand for RWD as well (it also supports XP and Vista). Check out the official press release for more details on this new version of RWD.

Last week’s Flash Memory Summit was a whirlwind of tutorials, announcements and networking, including a presentation by our very own CEO Roy Sherrill, but if you missed the announcement by ONFI (the Open NAND Flash Interface organization) that its new ONFI 2.3 specification will include the EZ-NAND protocol, take a few minutes to soak it in. The news about EZ-NAND, which stands for error correction code (ECC) Zero NAND, is especially welcome for manufacturers of smart phones and other high-performance, price-competitive embedded devices. The EZ-NAND protocol dictates that ECCs are done by the NAND itself rather than by the NAND controller or device driver, a much more efficient method (as we’ve been  blogging for nearly two years now). Also, in this era of fast-changing ECC NAND requirements, not having to keep up with the rapidly changing NAND ECC requirements by using costly high-end NAND controllers is a major competitive advantage for OEMs.

In current raw NAND implementations, the host controller is responsible for managing ECC and all other NAND functions like wear leveling, bad block management and compaction. ECC is notoriously difficult to implement in software, and EZ-NAND decouples it from the rest of these functions, allowing device designers to use the system processor for these functions and avoid the use of expensive NAND controllers. This setup, combined with a high-performance flash manager like FlashFX Tera, offers OEMs the ultimate combination of performance, flexibility and low cost to make those high-octane smart phone processors (MIPS, PowerPC, iMX-31 and OMAP families, etc.) really shine. While eMMC, with its hardware-based ECC seems to offer good compromise, the reality is that the other NAND functions (wear-leveling, bad block management and compaction) have to contend with the inexpensive controller found in the eMMC device. Translation: less-than-optimal use of the flash and seriously bogged-down performance in many use cases.

We would love to hear what you thought of this year’s Flash Memory Summit, what you learned, what surprised you and what you liked or didn’t like.  Also, let us know if you have comments or questions about EZ-NAND using the comment field below.

Earlier this week we announced XCFiles, a design-ready exFAT-compatible file system for next-generation extended capacity SD (SDXC) cards. Visit Datalight.com to read the full announcement or learn more about our exFAT implementation

Bothell, WA, – June 15, 2010 – Today Datalight announced support for Micron Technology’s 4-gigabit (Gb) 34-nanometer (nm) NAND flash with on-die error correction code (ECC) within its popular flash managers, including FlashFX Pro and FlashFX Tera.

Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/9xn2DW