This is the mail archive of the
ecos-discuss@sourceware.org
mailing list for the eCos project.
RE: FAT32 over NAND
- From: "Paul D. DeRocco" <pderocco at ix dot netcom dot com>
- To: "eCos Discuss" <ecos-discuss at ecos dot sourceware dot org>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:09:09 -0800
- Subject: RE: [ECOS] FAT32 over NAND
> From: Jonathan Larmour
>
> There are also patent issues. FTLs are covered by patents by M-Systems,
> Inc. in the US and Europe at least. You cannot develop or sell a product
> containing an FTL in those markets without getting a licence from
> M-Systems
> (unless it's used in a PCMCIA device, for which M-Systems grants a
> no-royalty licence).
The SmartMedia specification, originally from May 1999, establishes a
standard for reading and writing SmartMedia cards, which are just single
NAND flash chips in a pluggable package, and it describes how a FAT16 file
system must map to the flash chip, by aligning the cluster boundaries to the
erasable block boundaries. There is no support for wear leveling beyond what
can be done while the power is turned on (i.e., maintaining a rover for
allocating the next block), and FAT16 is limited to 64K clusters which makes
it appropriate only for smaller sizes. Does the M-Systems patent cover any
translation layer one might write for a SmartMedia card?
--
Ciao, Paul D. DeRocco
Paul mailto:pderocco@ix.netcom.com
--
Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos
and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss