Dov Moran and Aryeh Mergi oral history | 102792097

Description

Dov Moran and Aryeh Mergi are both Israeli entrepreneurs. Dov was born in Israel in 1955 , while Aryeh was born in Morocco in 1961 and came to Israel 3 years later. They were both descendants of entrepreneurs as well. They met in the Israeli Navy where they worked on various electronics projects. After spending 8 years in the Navy, Dov left the service and started his own company, Moran Systems.

One of his projects was to build a rugged PC for military and industrial applications. He asked Aryeh to help him in this project, working evenings and weekends while still in the Navy. They then worked together on a follow-on project to build a hand-held computer. This work expanded Moran’s horizons and introduced him to the US market, and led both Moran and Mergi to start developing SSDs based on various memory technologies that were available at that time.

While in the US, Moran heard about the development of the first non-volatile memory chip. He was able to raise $300,000 to build a solid-state disk out of these new chips. He changed the name of his company to “M-Systems” in January 1989 and they successfully developed this product. This was their first step into what was to become.

M-Systems went on to establish several important standards in Flash storage systems, and developed the first flash-based Solid State Disk (SSD) in 1990, the DiskOnChip embedded flash device in 1995, the first USB Flash Drive (called DiskOnKey) in 1999, the first flash-based SSD for a cell phone in 2002 (called Mobile DiskOnChip), and the first 4 bits/cell (X4, now called QLC) technology in 2006. M-Systems was competing in the flash market with SanDisk, but its important UFD, cell phone and X4 technology made a cooperative environment more financially advantageous. This led to a strategic agreement with cross licensing of patents, and ultimately M-Systems was acquired by SanDisk in 2006 in an all-stock transaction worth US$1.55 billion.

Date

2020-09-08

Participants

Berg, Brian A., Interviewer

Fairbairn, Doug, Interviewer

Mergi, Aryeh, Interviewee

Moran, Dov, Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Tel Aviv, Israel

Duration

02:43:21

Format

MOV

Collection Title

CHM Oral History Collection

Credit

Computer History Museum

Lot Number

X9338.2021

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