Re: Disk-On-Chip progress.

Re: Disk-On-Chip progress.

[David Woodhouse]

David.Woodhouse@mvhi.com said:
> now we're talking, and they seem fairly genuinely willing to work with
> us to  find a solution to the problem. It seems as if we'll be able to
> reach an  agreement fairly soon. I certainly hope so.

They seem to be labouring under the impression that they risking losing their
intellectual property if they allow drivers to be released under GPL.

There are two aspect to it: firstly the actual hardware interface to the 
Disk-On-Chip, and secondly the NFTL filesystem. 

Looking at the hardware interface first: M-Systems seem to believe that the 
availability of driver source code would allow competitors to duplicate their 
hardware.

This is insane, because the hardware is covered by numerous patents (search for
M-Systems on www.patents.ibm.com and you'll see them). So they've got no real
reason for believing that their hardware would be duplicated. 

Quite frankly, I believe it would be easier to reproduce the hardware from the 
patents than it would from the driver software. Either way, it would be fairly 
difficult. You can't just look at the overview or the interface and 
automatically get all the details of the ASIC right first time, without 
spending months ironing out the bugs.


With NFTL, their position is slightly more understandable - but only slightly.
They don't want their filesystem to be used on other manufacturers' hardware, 
which is understandable. But I don't agree that there's a problem with having 
a GPL'd version.

There's already a GPL'd implementation of FTL, their original flash filesystem.
They hold patents on it, and it's restricted for use only with PCMCIA devices. 

Any competing manufacturer who sold devices using FTL would be in violation of 
the patents. Exactly the same would happen with NFTL - so they have no reason 
to be concerned about releasing a GPL'd version of NFTL either.

I'm trying to keep the two separate, and concentrate on the first - if we can
drive the Disk-On-Chip hardware, then we can put another filesystem on it. But 
if we can't, there's no chance of it being useful at all.

Having NFTL would also be useful, because it would allow interoperation 
between Linux and other operating systems on the device, but in practice 
you're unlikely to want a dual-boot system on the Disk-On-Chip, so it's not 
the end of the world if we don't get it. Of course, there's no reason for them 
to withold it, but I'm concentrating on the hardware interface first.




----                                 ----                                 ----
David Woodhouse        David.Woodhouse@mvhi.com       Office: (+44) 1223 810302
 Project Leader,     Process Information Systems      Mobile: (+44) 976 658355
    Axiom (Cambridge) Ltd., Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridge, CB5 0NA, UK.
             finger dwmw2@ferret.lmh.ox.ac.uk for PGP key.




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Re: Disk-On-Chip progress.

[David Hinds]

On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 04:06:45PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> 
> There's already a GPL'd implementation of FTL, their original flash
> filesystem.  They hold patents on it, and it's restricted for use
> only with PCMCIA devices.

Sure, but as you well know, the Linux FTL implementation is being
used on non-PCMCIA devices, in violation of their license... perhaps
not in commercial products, but I don't really know.

they could argue that keeping NFTL proprietary saves them from having
to police and enforce their IP rights by litigation.  I'm not saying I
think this is a great position for them to take, just that it isn't
completely irrational.

-- Dave


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Re: Disk-On-Chip progress.

[David Woodhouse]

jgg@deltatee.com said:
>  I was chatting with some of our folks here, apparently some time ago
> we tried quite hard to get specs for their stuff, we were willing to
> sign NDA's, etc, inorder to make it work in QNX. Apparently we got
> noplace with them :<

I found the same - I spent about three months waiting for a response from 
their 'Director of Marketing and Sales Europe.' Then I was fed to a technical 
person, who listed to what I wanted, and decided I had to talk to someone 
higher up...

I suspect that I was just caught up in red tape the whole time, and that I 
didn't actually get attention from anyone who was able to make real decisions 
until yesterday, when the news of my web site filtered back up through the 
ranks to their President. 

It was quite amusing watching the hits from lots of different machines within
their domain and wondering who they were from. They don't have reverse DNS set
up, so I could only guess (tech.m-sys.com, marketing.m-sys.com,
admin.m-sys.com, legal.m-sys.com...)

It's unfortunate that such tactics were the only way to open discussions, but 
now we're talking, and they seem fairly genuinely willing to work with us to 
find a solution to the problem. It seems as if we'll be able to reach an 
agreement fairly soon. I certainly hope so.

As I said, watch this space.


----                                 ----                                 ----
David Woodhouse        David.Woodhouse@mvhi.com       Office: (+44) 1223 810302
 Project Leader,     Process Information Systems      Mobile: (+44) 976 658355
    Axiom (Cambridge) Ltd., Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridge, CB5 0NA, UK.
             finger dwmw2@ferret.lmh.ox.ac.uk for PGP key.




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Disk-On-Chip progress.

[David Woodhouse]

I have heard again from the President of M-Systems Ltd in Israel. He has been
unable to arrange an internal meeting today on such short notice to discuss the
issue, but he has promised to get back to me by the end of the week with a
proposal for a solution.

He concludes with the sentence:
> We are looking forward to the success of Linux and want to be part of it.

I firmly believe that we are going to be able to find a solution which 
benefits all concerned, and we'll soon be able to recommend M-Systems' 
products as well-supported under Linux. Watch this space.



----                                 ----                                 ----
David Woodhouse        David.Woodhouse@mvhi.com       Office: (+44) 1223 810302
 Project Leader,     Process Information Systems      Mobile: (+44) 976 658355
    Axiom (Cambridge) Ltd., Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridge, CB5 0NA, UK.
             finger dwmw2@ferret.lmh.ox.ac.uk for PGP key.




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Re: Disk-On-Chip progress.

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Tue, 6 Jul 1999, David Woodhouse wrote:

> I have heard again from the President of M-Systems Ltd in Israel. He has been
> unable to arrange an internal meeting today on such short notice to discuss the
> issue, but he has promised to get back to me by the end of the week with a
> proposal for a solution.

I was chatting with some of our folks here, apparently some time ago we
tried quite hard to get specs for their stuff, we were willing to sign
NDA's, etc, inorder to make it work in QNX. Apparently we got noplace with
them :<

Jason



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Disk-On-Chip progress.

[David Woodhouse]

I seem to be able to read the flash. I can also detect the presence of a 
Disk-On-Chip. I can't yet work out the size of the DOC automatically, or 
decode the filesystem on it.

There are some files in ftp://imladris.mvhi.com/pub/mtd/DOCdocs/ which may be 
useful.

BIOS-startupcode.asm: Disassembly of the BIOS ROM which loads the main code 
		from flash. It's this on which I based the C code.

linuxdriver.asm: A disassembly of the binary-only Linux driver, with as many 
		symbols put back in for readability as possible. 

doc-kernel.c: My preliminary kernel driver for the beast. It appears to be 
		able to read lots of interesting stuff off the DoC. Strangely,
		I can't see anything on there that looks even vaguely like FTL,
		so perhaps I'm missing something.



----                                 ----                                 ----
David Woodhouse        David.Woodhouse@mvhi.com       Office: (+44) 1223 810302
 Project Leader,     Process Information Systems      Mobile: (+44) 976 658355
    Axiom (Cambridge) Ltd., Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridge, CB5 0NA, UK.
             finger dwmw2@ferret.lmh.ox.ac.uk for PGP key.




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