Industry leaders provide expertise for next generation board interconnect solutions

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Aug. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The PISMO(TM) Advisory Council today announced that Agilent Technologies, Samtec and Mentor Graphics have joined the group. PISMO is the industry's first organization focused on streamlining system-level Flash memory validation and test. It is a global collaboration of industry leaders defining and developing standards for board level memory. The Council, founded by Spansion and ARM in 2004, now includes 18 member companies.

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"This group of new members demonstrates the expanding reach of the PISMO ecosystem, and we are very excited by the capabilities and expertise they bring to the PISMO industry consortium," said Rik Graulus, Senior Business Development Manager at Spansion and Chairman of the PISMO Advisory Council. "Agilent's extensive test, measurement and probing capabilities, combined with Samtec's expertise in developing robust board interconnect solutions, with access to Mentor's state-of-the-art simulation tools will be extremely important for the next-generation PISMO specification aimed at supporting memory devices operating at frequencies up to 533MHz. Higher operating frequencies require designers to have access to more advanced tools to address signal integrity and crosstalk, and require reliable probing solutions for debugging, troubleshooting, testing and validating PISMO modules with high speed devices."

Recent growth in the wireless and embedded markets has given rise to a myriad of new processors, chipsets and memory types that must be tested for compatibility. Without a standard interface, system designers must develop and use a variety of device-specific development boards to ensure compatibility. The PISMO standard is intended to address this challenge and the selection of the right board interconnect solution is of paramount importance.

About the PISMO Advisory Council

The PISMO Advisory Council, spearheaded by Spansion and ARM, is the industry's first organization focused on streamlining system-level memory test and validation. The PISMO interface standard defines mechanical and electrical specifications for small form factor memory modules. The PISMO(TM) modules are stackable and supported by tools that provide easy access to signals for performing in-depth analysis. These features and more make PISMO memory modules ideal for validating and prototyping combinations of memory devices with a variety of host controllers.

PISMO Advisory Council member companies include ARM, Agilent, Analog Devices, Broadcom, Cypress, HARDI Electronics, Mentor Graphics, Micron, NanoAmp Solutions, NEC, Qimonda, Samsung, Samtec, Sandisk (M-Systems), SMedia, Spansion, Spreadtrum and Toshiba. For more information on PISMO products and membership, please visit the PISMO Advisory Council Web site at http://www.pismoworld.org.

About Spansion

Spansion is a leading Flash memory solutions provider, dedicated to enabling, storing and protecting digital content in wireless, automotive, networking and consumer electronics applications. Spansion, previously a joint venture of AMD and Fujitsu, is the largest company in the world dedicated exclusively to designing, developing, manufacturing, marketing and selling Flash memory solutions. For more information, visit http://www.spansion.com.

PISMO(TM) and the PISMO logo are trademarks of Spansion LLC. Other names used are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Spansion(R), the Spansion logo, MirrorBit(R), MirrorBit(R) Eclipse(TM), ORNAND(TM), ORNAND2(TM), HD-SIM(TM), Spansion(R) EcoRam(TM) and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Spansion LLC in the U.S. and other countries. Other names used are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Web site: http://www.pismoworld.org/
http://www.spansion.com/