Flash Storage Solutions for Embedded Designs
High Reliability Flash SSDs, Cards and Modules for Industrial Applications
Industrial SD cards | Portable Storage for Embedded Designs
Consumer product innovation has always been driven by an insatiable need to create smaller, lighter, faster and cheaper designs. This was not the case with Industrial and Embedded applications where product reliability and continuation of supply have been the drivers in component selection. However, the popularity and universal acceptance of consumer devices has also driven the embedded designs toward integration of consumer standards.
The same could be said of the progression of Flash card standards in the embedded space. CompactFlash card was a universally accepted storage device in the embedded designs. As the consumer industry migrated rapidly from CompactFlash card to SD card and microSD form factors, the embedded designers have also migrated the new designs t use the now ubiquitous SD card standard.
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Replacing Legacy Storage Devices - Low Capacity SSDs and Flash Cards
Oftentimes we get emails from customers looking for a Flash storage solution for an application that had been designed quite a few years back. Usually this involves either a low capacity HDD or Flash card replacement or an interface that has been technically obsoleted long ago.
As an example, one of our customers refurbishes old airplanes. The business involves keeping the plane hull and upgrading the cockpit electronics. Well, the old airplanes, obviously, have older components, and the HDD in the black box is typically in the 10's of Megabytes range. Nowadays, one can easily buy a HDD in 100's of Gigabytes or even Terrabytes, but to buy a brand new HDD with only 10's of Megabytes is not possible.
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M.2, MO-300, MO-297 - New Flash Drive Standards Expand SSD Differentiation
Seems just yesterday the battle raged between CompactFlash, SmartMedia, SD and Memory Stick Flash card form factors. Every one of these formats was driven by huge corporate interests that vested huge am
ounts of time and money to drive the customer momentum to their preferred product category. As the battles raged, SmartMedia and Memory Stick became road kills and are no longer being designed-in or even manufactured by the suppliers. Of the remaining formats, CompactFlash has lived on mostly in Industrial Applications and SD card, while still used, got miniaturized into much more popular mini and micro SD formats.
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Smallest Form Factor - 7-pin SATA Flash Module - High Capacity in Tiny Space
SATA Interface Standard Connectors
Many embedded motherboards have integrated a smaller 7-pin female SATA connector over the much more common 22-pin connector. The 22-pin connector, long a standard for HDD or SSD interface in PC motherboards, is actually quite sizable.
While the connector size oftentimes is not important in a high functionality desktop PC, for single board computers with dedicated specific task application, everything, including the SSD connector needs to be miniaturized. The embedded industry quickly converted the motherboard design to a 7-pin SATA connector variant. Given that the Flash Memory Modules can be manufactured in a very small physical sizes, the memory modules also sized down near the size of the new connector.
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