BSquare Adds WinCE Secure Digital Support

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(04/16/02, 02:51:21 AM EDT)

BELLEVUE, WA - In an effort to fill a gap in Microsoft Corp.'s .NET and Windows XP offerings, BSquare Corp. is introducing tools by which Windows CE embedded and iAppliance developers can quickly add support for the Secure Digital standard.

Formed about a year ago by companies such as Matsushita, SunDisk and Toshiba, the SD Association promotes a Secure Digital specification defining a postage stamp sized SD Card based on flash and nonvolatile memory capable of storing 32 to 256 Megabytes of information.

Through its SDIO Now! program BSquare will provide members with software subsystems, peripheral driver development tools and the technical assistance needed to support SD on the Windows CE .NET operating system, and the Pocket PC and Smartphone device platforms.

Currently "native" support for the SD IO specification is not currently provided in Windows Embedded operating systems. Peripheral manufacturers are required to write custom peripheral device drivers, which support proprietary bus driver interfaces. Device OEMs are limited to the peripherals that support proprietary bus drivers. With its SDIO Now! BSquare hopes to accelerate production of SD IO-capable products based on Windows CE.

BSquare is currently accepting membership applications for SDIO Now! Three classes of membership are offered: OEM/Device Slot Membership, which includes miniport based bus controller IP and peripheral driver development tools; Peripheral Device Membership, which includes peripheral driver development tools; and Host Controller Membership which includes development of host controller drivers and reference design enabling software. For more information go to www.bsquare.com