Swissbit: 20 years of flash memory

20 years in the electronics industry is an age; particularly for storage media. When SD cards were introduced to the market in 2000, their maximum storage capacity was just 64 MB. It was at around this time, in the summer of 2001, that
Swissbit was created – following a management buy-out from the Siemens Semiconductor Group. Over the next two decades, the company grew into a leading global technology provider offering solutions for all common storage interfaces. Today, the company’s product portfolio ranges from SSDs with PCIe and SATA interfaces (mSATA, Slim SATA, CFast, M.2 and 2.5“ as well as CompactFlash) to USB flash drives, SD and microSD memory cards and Managed NAND BGAs. All these storage products have one thing in common: they are, and have always been, ‘Made in Germany’.

Since 2008, the company has focused entirely on industrial-grade memory solutions, which today are increasingly based on 3D NAND. The company says the recipe for the success of these memory products is its close cooperation with manufacturers of NAND chips and controllers, an own production line with stringent quality testing, and the development of firmware that is optimized to customer-specific requirements. The latter is particularly important in an industrial environment, where the requirements for products with 3D NAND are significantly different to those in the consumer or IT markets. Durability and reliability of a storage medium for applications in industry, telecommunications, automotive or medical technology rely on smart firmware features, an area in which the Swiss supplier is a pioneer.

New capacities, new markets

The company underlined its clear commitment to Germany as a manufacturing location when, at the end of 2019, it built its second plant in Berlin on a site of more than 20,000 m². The state-of-the-art production facility combines SMT lines and clean rooms with advanced 3D packaging, tripling the previous production capacity. The advanced capabilities and technologies in the factory mean it is able to produce highly integrated system-in-package solutions – something rarely seen in European facilities. Accordingly, other manufacturers are offered access to these capacities as well as to the advanced engineering skills of the companies electronics experts.

From secure memory cards to
embedded IoT

The company has been actively promoting the combination of reliable storage media and security features since 2013. Initially, the focus was on SD and microSD cards with integrated encryption software that made tamper-proof mobile phones or data protection compliant memory modules possible. With increasing demand and rapid digitalization, however, the company began to wonder if these were memory cards with a security solution or instead a security solution in the shape of memory cards? This alternative perspective generated a whole host of application opportunities and led to the formation of the company’s ‘Embedded IoT’ business unit in 2019.

The name of the new business unit hints at two directions. Firstly, the factory in Berlin facilitates the production of system-in-package and multi-chip-modules – also in the form of a microSD card or a customized form factor. Additional elements integrated microcontrollers, NAND chips and crypto chips can be embedded in these modules. However, sensors, wireless chips and antennas can also be embedded to offer additional machine communication features. Secondly, many application scenarios refer to embedded systems and the protection of their data and their communication. The ability to offer such modules in the shape of flash-memory has a definitive advantage. Even older machinery and systems generally have a USB port or an interface for memory cards. This means that it is not only modern systems, designed with a secure IoT in mind, but also existing devices that can be secured using our security memory.

Storing and protecting data in IoT

Digitalization is not only happening in centralized IT systems; and the need for innovative security products in the form of memory modules with integrated chips for authentication and data encryption is becoming ever more apparent. For the networking of devices in an IoT-fashion, data needs to be
recorded, provided, and securely transmitted across many different points. And this also needs to be ensured outside of the relatively protected environment of a data centre, where conditions may even be hostile to electronics.

At the end of 2020, with the acquisition of
Hyperstone, a manufacturer of flash memory controllers, the company further underlined its ambitions around security solutions for the IoT. In so doing, it deepened its value and technology chain and strengthened its position as a trusted partner with full control of the design of security solutions: from the design and development of products, the integration of security building blocks such as Secure Elements, NAND flash memory and controllers, to the secure production in its own certified manufacturing facility in Berlin.

At the time of the acquisition, CEO Silvio Muschter commented: “Digitalization and connectivity of devices in the IoT are driving the demand for secure, high-quality storage products from our memory division and security solutions from our Embedded IoT division. The most valuable asset is data. At Swissbit we see it as our key responsibility to store and protect this data reliably.”

Counterfeit-proof ID

The increasing networking of industrial systems, i.e. the independent communication between ‘things’ – brings not only new opportunities but also new risks. What would happen if hackers or tampered systems were to gain control over robots or industrial plants? Or even power stations or chemical
factories? When it comes to security, how does a ‘thing’ know that the data received from another ‘thing’ are correct and that the source of a message is truly the system component that it claims to be?

One possible solution to this would be, for instance, a secure element on memory media that assigns applications and systems a unique identity. ‘Things’ are assigned a counterfeit-proof ID. This way, networked systems can be protected from misuse and identity theft. Furthermore, data access can be deliberately restricted, secure boot media provided or licences and intellectual property securely protected. Smart cards, integrated on memory cards, provide systems with identities that cannot be copied, transforming them into uniquely identifiable M2M communication participants that can authenticate themselves and send and receive cryptographically heavily secured data.

With these and other solutions, Swissbit says it is bridging the gap between robust, durable storage solutions and intelligent security products for the IoT in the year of its twentieth anniversary.

Company contact
Swissbit AG

Industriestrasse 4

9552 Bronschhofen

www.swissbit.com