Integrated NAND Flash simplifies consumer devices

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Nov 4, 2005

Esol has signed an agreement with Samsung Electronics to offer software for Samsung's NAND Flash memory products for the digital camera and cellular markets.

Real-time embedded software solutions supplier Esol has signed an agreement with Samsung Electronics to offer software for Samsung's NAND Flash memory products for the digital camera and cellular markets.

Under the terms of the agreement, Esol will customise Samsung's Extended Sector Remapper (XSR) technology and offer it along with technical support and professional services, making Samsung's proven Flash management technology accessible to more embedded developers.

XSR is a Flash translation layer that sits between an OS/file system and the Samsung NAND Flash memory.

It provides block-device functionality to the OS and the file system, so NAND Flash will function similar to a hard disk drive, while providing the benefits of solid state reliability, reduced power consumption and increased performance.

Esol's XSR software transparently manages the NAND Flash, including wear-levelling algorithms, bad block management, sector translation and an interface to the low-level NAND driver.

The combination of the XSR and PrFILE2, Esol's enhanced FAT file system for multimedia applications, is well-suited to digital consumer electronics such as digital cameras and cellular phones that are being designed with large amounts of NAND Flash memory for data storage.

"Esol is known as the primary RTOS and software vendor for digital consumer electronics", said Tomoyuki Uda, Managing Director at Esol.

"This partnership with Samsung will enable us to offer its leading NAND Flash solutions to our top-tier consumer electronics manufacturers, which produce world-class, digital products and services", "We are very pleased to have Esol as a strategic partner", said Jon Kang, Senior Vice President, Technical Marketing, Samsung Semiconductor.

"It has the engineering expertise to satisfy the increasing market preference for easy NAND design integration, which allows us to bring our cutting-edge technology to many more consumer electronics producers".

Esol's XSR driver for PrFILE2 will be available in December 2005.