Strommen, Norway-based MRT International A/S has launched a Flash memory card for portable computers that stores large volumes of data and performs superfast data searches, regardless of the data’s structure. MRT says the SmartDisk is a highly enhanced Personal Computer Memory Card Association type II card. It is available in 8Mb and 16Mb capacities, and will be expanded to a 32Mb version. At the heart of it is a custom-designed and built non-numeric co-processor called the MS160 and MRT’s data retrieval software, MPiRE, Multipurpose Information Retrieval Environment. The MS160 was designed by the company in conjunction with the University of Trondheim for fuzzy information retrieval and pattern recognition and is a massively parallel chip. It is manufactured for the Norwegians in France by Temic Telefunken Microelectronic GmbH as there are no silicon foundries in Norway. The MS160 operates at 20MHz and is capable of sustaining a browsing rate of 160Mb a second. It operates on 5V power supply. Eight search criteria can be used simultaneously. A search criterion consists of upper and lower limits for all elements in a 32-byte vector; each criterion is handled by a signal window, of which there are eight. It has one processing element dedicated for each vector element and so can compare 256 signal values on every clock cycle, around 1,000m comparisons a second. There are 32 chained processing elements for each window. The MS160 and a large amount of dedicated memory are housed on a single board for the AT bus; boards are made for MRT by Siemens AG in Norway. MRT says that as unstructured data occupies less memory than the structured data found in conventional databases, SmartDisk aids users in making more effective use of the Flash memory. Users can search on parts of words, whole words or combinations; the data can be in any state of disorder. MRT believes that it will be useful for users with large volumes of data such as lawyers or travelling salesman. It is going into production now and will ship in September. Prices have not been fixed; the company says the changing prices of Flash memory make this difficult but the 8Mb card is likely to cost $800; the 16Mb probably less than twice that. There is a desktop version that uses the MS160 called the RamScan, suitable for personal computers and networked boxes. The company says that the MS160 has been in production for about 18 months, and that it is being marketed to other companies, especially those needing test and measurement equipment, along with a development tool kit.
