M$ to license FAT

[Anthony de Boer]

Tim Writer wrote:
> Taavi Burns <taavi-LbuTpDkqzNzXI80/IeQp7B2eb7JE58TQ at public.gmane.org> writes:
> > Most (all?) of the standard Flash memory devices these days have onboard
> > controllers which can detect failing sectors in the flash memory, and will
> > reroute data to spare sectors, much as HDs do these days.
> 
> Are you sure?  The JFFS2 folks don't seem to think so and anecdotal evidence
> seems to bear me out.

Compact Flash has onboard smarts to do wear-levelling, etc, and presents
an IDE-compatible interface.  JFFS2 is meant for vanilla flash, where
you're getting directly at the stuff and have to implement all of that
yourself.  

I can't speak for the other flavours of consumer-grade removable flash,
but they'd be somewhere on the spectrum between those two.  Leaving off
the smarts will of course give you a smaller and cheaper device.

-- 
Anthony de Boer
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