Tuxera Partners with NplusT to Create Novel Suite of Flash Memory Services

Tuxera, Inc. and NplusT Srl announced a partnership to provide a novel suite of value-added services, from flash testing and characterization to advanced flash management software.

The partnership is aimed at helping customers bring safety-critical and high-reliability products to market more quickly and at lower costs.

Based in Finland, Tuxera developing quality-assured software for flash management, file system management, and networking, powering billions of devices, cars, and public cloud platforms worldwide. NplusT, located in Italy and known for shortening development times for its customers, is a provider of fast and affordable solutions for characterization, testing and reliability verification of NAND and other NVM devices.

“NplusT has great experience on the hardware side – how to do NAND characterization, how to help the customer design the device so that they can produce it quickly, and all the while removing some of the risks,” said Marko Finnig, VP, product management, Tuxera. “So then the question is, how do you actually manage the NAND? That’s where Tuxera comes in. We create the flash translation layer, software that manages the NAND, and the file system on top of it. This allows our customers to create cost-effective devices that are reliable. So you get the best of both worlds – you get the cost-effectiveness, but you also get the reliability.“

“Tuxera has great software for managing storage at a high level, independent of component management,” said Tamas Kerekes, president and CEO, NplusT. “What NplusT adds to Tuxera is low-level memory know-how, which is critical and important in two areas. There is the NAND chip itself, which requires very specific algorithms, which is one area of our expertise, coming from working with customers in the characterization. And the other is our knowledge of new memory technologies and characterization with semiconductor manufacturers.”

He said the partnership unites the strengths of his company and Tuxera to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

“This kind of strong cooperation between companies can create a much better product than what comes from trying to integrate two products from different companies,” he added. “We can do native integrations, which will deliver more performant and reliable results in the end.“

The 2 firms see the partnership as bringing benefits to both companies’ client bases, as it will introduce NplusT’s capabilities in flash memory testing to Tuxera’s industry clients, and connect Tuxera’s flash controller and flash enablement software to the semiconductor manufacturers with whom NplusT works closely.

The partnership also will open the door to potential joint research and development efforts that can create solutions to better serve the needs of the 2 firm’s customers in the embedded market, the companies said.

Unlike traditional partnerships, the association between the 2 companies is not tied to the production of a specific product but instead is a package of services that can be tailored to specific clients. The 2 firms encourage potential customers to contact them early in the product design phases in order to best leverage the companies’ full complement of skills.