FORTASA BLOG

Many end applications for Industrial Storage Products such as SSDs and Flash cards require full Industrial temperature range operation. That means the the storage device needs to be fully functional and operate reliably even under the most extreme temperature conditions. An industry convention proliferated to differentiate between a typical consumer operation of 0oC to +70oC (Standard Temperature) and Industrial requirement of -40oC to +85oC (Industrial Temperature).

Upto a few years ago the only Storage Products capable of full Industrial Temperature compliance were the ones manufactured using the Single-Level Cell (SLC) NAND Flash. The SLC Flash offered not only full Industrial Temperature compliance, but also a very high endurance rating of 60K to 100K cycles. The only drawback to using SLC NAND based SSDs was the high cost of the solution.

At the same time, the Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash was being aggressively driven into a multitude of high volume consumer applications such as Digital Cameras, MP3 players, Cellular Phones and Tablet PCs. MLC Flash made most sense in these consumer "disposable" application as while the endurance rating of typically 3K cycles and temperature support were minimal, the component price was almost four times cheaper than the equivalent capacity SLC component.

Many Industrial customers were eager to take advantage of higher capacity and significantly lower cost of MLC in their end applications but could not as the MLC NAND components were only rated for Standard temperature operation.

Recently, a technological breakthrough from Micron enabled them to produce a full Industrial Temperature compliant MLC NAND component. Based on this Flash component an entirely new class of SSD's and Flash cards can now be manufactured to address the low cost and temperature extreme requirements of the Industrial market segment. As an added benefit, Industrial customers with a longer product life horizon, can utilize a double capacity MLC NAND-based SSD for half the cost of an SLC NAND-based SSD.

Fortasa SSD w/Micron MLC NAND

Fortasa Memory Systems offers a full line of SLC and MLC NAND based SSDs and Flash Cards.We also provide a full Endurance and Lifecycle report for any of our manufactured products.

Please contact Fortasa to receive a advanced technical information on specific product endurance.