Flash Memory Summit Announces Lifetime Achievement Award Winners for 2018

SANTA CLARA, CA - July 18, 2018 - Flash Memory Summit (FMS), to be held August 7-9 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, is pleased to announce the winners of its 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award: Dov Moran and Aryeh Mergi. With inspiration from Intel's first flash products in 1988, Dov and Aryeh co-founded M-Systems in Israel in 1989 with the vision of building devices based on flash memory. Dov was CEO, and Aryeh was CTO and later also ran Marketing and Business Development.

Dov's numerous inventions at M-Systems include the 1993 DiskOnChip, whose design was adopted by Nokia for embedded flash in its cell phones. He also invented the 1999 DiskOnKey USB Flash Drive, a device whose design remains hugely popular today Aryeh was the key driver behind TrueFFS, a Flash Translation Layer architecture that was adopted by Microsoft for an early flash file system.

M-Systems introduced numerous other innovative products under the leadership of Dov and Aryeh, including flash-based SIM cards, smart USB drives, encrypted USB drives, and very early 4-bit/cell NAND flash (now called QLC). They are both named inventors of numerous patents. SanDisk purchased the company in 2006, and Western Digital purchased SanDisk in 2016.

SanDisk founder Eli Harari, the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, said "Dov Moran and Aryeh Mergi pioneered and made history with a succession of ground-breaking flash memory products, early QLC technology, and very early use of NAND in place of NOR. This recognition is timely and very well deserved."

The FMS Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes individuals who have shown outstanding leadership in promoting the development and use of flash memory and associated or related technologies. Recent recipients include George Perlegos of Intel, SEEQ and Atmel, and Dr. Kinam Kim of Samsung. Information about all past recipients are on the FMS website at

Lifetime Achievement Award

FMS features the latest technology trends, the most exciting products, and the broadest coverage in this rapidly expanding market. In 2017, FMS drew over 6,000 registrants and over 120 exhibitors. The 2018 event already projects significant growth. The conference also features marketing and market research tracks, and sessions sponsored by NVM Express®, SNIA, JEDEC, SCSI Trade Association, SD Card Association, UFSA, and the Fibre Channel Industry Association. Popular continuing features include an expert table session, performance testing results, and a VC Forum.

About the Flash Memory Summit

Flash Memory Summit, produced by Conference ConCepts, showcases the mainstream applications, key technologies, and leading vendors that are driving the multi-billion dollar non-volatile memory and SSD markets. FMS is now the world’s largest event featuring the trends, innovations, and influencers driving the adoption of flash memory in demanding enterprise storage applications, as well as in smartphones, tablets, and mobile and embedded systems.

Media Contacts

Dan Chmielewski +1.949.231.2965
Suzanne Tuchler +1.408.307.6900
Flash Memory Summit
[email protected]