FORTASA BLOG

The CompactFlash (CF) card form factor has been in use since the early 1990's. Originally embraced by the consumer devices such as Digital Cameras and MP3 players it has more recently migrated to the industrial and embedded platforms.

The CompactFlash card has many distinct advantages: common interface, installed base of manufacturers, specification stability and minimum innovation. In recent years, however, Parallel ATA (PATA) systems and respectively, CF cards have been slowly replaced by SATA interface systems and multiple form factors they incorporate.

Industrial CompactFlash card

As the demand for CF cards and PATA SSDs has been dropping, many storage product manufacturers are promoting the migration to SATA and dropping support for CF and PATA. In reality, there still is a sizable installed base of OEMs and platforms that would prefer to continue using the existing PATA SSDs and CF.

Many legacy PATA designs with CF cards as a storage choice are performing perfectly for their end applications. CF usage, while on a decline, is still significant in volume and will be around for a long time.

Concurrently, the storage industry had seen a high level of corporate consolidation and reallocation of resources.  Just in the last year alone, long-time suppliers like Western Digital (WD) and STEC completely exited the industrial embedded SSD space. This unexpected exodus has left many long-time CF card customers without their qualified suppliers.

In this tumultuous time, Fortasa is more than ever committed  to manufacturing and supporting its Industrial line of CompactFlash cards and PATA SSDs. In addition to the legacy PC ATA Cards, CF and PATA SSDs form the basis of Fortasa legacy product group.  Our sales and engineering group  have substantial experience in Flash Storage Products and can assist any customer with the product migration and qualification of the Fortasa devices.

Fortasa Industrial Grade CF cards are manufactured using high reliability SLC NAND Flash or cost effective MLC NAND Flash components and feature sequential read/write speeds of up to 115/80 MB/s. The cards come in commercial and industrial temperature configurations and meet MIL-810 standards for humidity, altitude, shock and vibration.

Available in capacities ranging from 128MB to 32GB, Fortasa CF cards offer the industry’s longest product lifecycle of over 5 years.

Please contact Fortasa for Information about our CompactFlash card and PATA SSD products.