SiliconSystems, Inc. has contributed its SiliconDrive II Blade specification to the Small Form Factor Special Interest Group (SFF-SIG) for use in creating an official governing standard. The specification defines the pin-out and mechanical form factor of products compatible with the SiliconBlade Socket.
SiliconSystems and other industry leaders have agreed to form a working group within SFF-SIG to develop a specification under the MiniBlade 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. The SFF-SIG intends to publish the new MiniBlade specification within the next few months.
SFF-SIG members envision offering a wide range of products compatible with the SiliconBlade Socket and associated MiniBlade specification. These include OS boot devices, wireless transceivers, removable data loggers, hardware encryption keys, and GPS modules. The MiniBlade specification will incorporate support for interfaces such as USB, Serial ATA (SATA), Secure Digital (SD), MultiMediaCard (MMC), and a variety of other I/O and communications protocols.
“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.”
Silicon Systems
www.siliconsystems.com