SiliconSystems Contributes SiliconDrive II Blade Specification to Small Form Factor Special Interest Group
Share:
SiliconSystems Invented Form Factor to Become Industry Standard
ALISO VIEJO, Calif., October 15, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc., a world leader in advanced storage technology, today announced the company has contributed its SiliconDrive II Blade specification to the Small Form Factor Special Interest Group (SFF-SIG) for the purpose of creating an official governing standard. SFF-SIG is an international organization that leads a broad industry effort to create and promote standards for small form factor computers, controller boards and I/O modules. SiliconSystems along with other industry leaders have agreed to form a working group within SFF-SIG to develop a specification under the "MiniBlade(TM)" name that will define a wide-array of storage, communications, GPS and other I/O products that will be compatible with the SiliconBlade Socket jointly developed by SiliconSystems and Samtec. SiliconSystems has agreed to contribute its SiliconDrive II Blade specification that defines the pin-out and mechanical form factor of products compatible with the SiliconBlade Socket to the MiniBlade effort. The SFF-SIG intends to publish the new MiniBlade specification within the next few months.
SiliconSystems approached the SFF-SIG to collaborate on making its SiliconDrive II Blade an industry-standard form factor because a wide variety of SFF-SIG members recognized the value and flexibility of the innovative and robust small form factor design of the SiliconDrive II Blade. SFF-SIG members envision offering a wide range of products compatible with the SiliconBlade Socket and associated MiniBlade specification such as OS boot devices, wireless transceivers, removable data loggers, hardware encryption keys, and GPS modules. The new MiniBlade specification will incorporate support for interfaces such as Universal Serial Bus (USB), Serial ATA (SATA), Secure Digital (SD), MultiMediaCard (MMC) in addition to a variety of other I/O and communications protocols.
"SiliconSystems saw growing OEM customer demand for a smaller, scalable and more rugged storage form factor solution than was currently available from consumer-grade thumb drives or SD and MMC cards," said Gary Drossel, vice president of product planning at SiliconSystems. "By working with the SFF-SIG to develop the MiniBlade specification, our OEM customers will benefit from a new industry standard that was specifically designed to meet their requirements."
"Adopting the combination of SiliconSystems' SiliconDrive II Blade technology and Samtec's SiliconBlade Socket for the MiniBlade standard overcomes the environmental and size limitations with consumer-grade form factors that cannot meet the shock, vibration, scalability and flexible bus interface requirements of embedded applications," said Colin McCracken, co-founder of SFF-SIG. "This new standard has broad market appeal by supporting a wide range of popular interface technologies and leverages them for use in netcom, industrial, embedded computing, military and medical applications."
Companies interested in contributing to the development of the MiniBlade specification should contact the SFF-SIG at info@sff-sig.org.
About SiliconSystems
SiliconSystems is a world leader in advanced storage technology engineered exclusively for the high performance, high reliability, multi-year product lifecycle requirements of the Enterprise System OEM market. The company's patented SiliconDrive, SiliconDrive II, SiliconDrive II Blade and SiliconDrive EP technology exceeds the rigorous demands of applications in the netcom, industrial, embedded computing, data center, military and medical markets. SiliconSystems is based in Aliso Viejo, California. Additional company and product information is available on the company's website at www.siliconsystems.com.
Donna St. Jean Conti, APR
Keller Communication
949-367-1416
stconti@cox.net
Mobile: 949-290-0622
Agency Contact:
Annette Keller
Keller Communication
(949) 640-4811
akeller@siliconsystems.com
SiliconSystems Contact:
Tim Leary
SiliconSystems, Inc.
(949) 900-9402
tleary@siliconsystems.com
