Serving the Critical Data Storage Needs
of Industrial and OEM Customers

FORTASA BLOG

Flash Storage Solutions for Embedded Designs
High Reliability Flash SSDs, Cards and Modules for Industrial Applications

Industrial Flash SSD Economics - Premium Value for the Higher Quality

Posted by Robert Noyes on Saturday, 12 Apr 2014

Fortasa Industrial SSD Product Family

Frequently our embedded customers compare our Industrial Grade Flash Card, SSD and other storage products with the consumer grade devices typically found on Amazon, or other retail or e-tail sites. The discrepancy in product cost between the Industrial Grade Flash and its consumer brethren is amazingly wide. Considering that every card, whether Industrial or Consumer, has to have a connector, PCB, Flash Controller and NAND Flash component, they are often dumbfounded as to the such sizable price difference.

Given the lack of transparency, I wanted to elaborate on the economics of building an Industrial vs. a Consumer Flash card and the reason for substantial cost difference.

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SATA and ATA Disk Chips Overcome Vibration Impact - Directly Attached Flash SSD

Posted by Samuel Nakhimovsky on Monday, 17 Feb 2014

SATA and ATA Disk Chip

One of the most often heard customer suggestions about the SSD or Flash card products is that neither product category offers a good reliable connection in a high vibration environment. SSDs, Flash card and module are most often mated to the motherboard through a male/female socket and connector. This interconnect doesn't offer a reliable attachment, especially in a high vibration application. Over time the connector pins wear out and lose signal integrity, therefore causing drive failures or intermittent system operation.

The request has been to develop a directly attached Flash storage product to have a common socket/pin-out for easy capacity migration, offer sizable capacity and high reliability.

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Flash SSD Collects Data 20,000 Meters Above Earth - Reliable Operation High in The Sky

Posted by Samuel Nakhimovsky on Monday, 17 Feb 2014

Weather Balloon with Data Acquisition Payload

One of our customers has a peculiar requirement for our SSDs. They have to be able to function 20,000 feet up in the air. What a challenge !!!

Turns out he is manufacturing special equipment that measures atmospheric content of the stratosphere which is extends around 31 miles (50 km) down to about 4 to 12 miles (6 to 20 km) above the Earth's surface. This layer contains 19 percent of the atmosphere's gases. Monitoring the content of this layer gives scientists critical information about air pollution, volcanic activity, atmospheric changes, and even radiation fall out.

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Bill of Material Locking Guarantees Product Integrity - Don't Repeat Unnecessary SSD Product Qualifications

Posted by Samuel Nakhimovsky on Saturday, 15 Feb 2014

Our local manufacturers’ representative found an excellent opportunity for our products, and took me into a sales call. The customer profile was perfect; this was a manufacturer of Utility Meters. Business volume was medium size. SSD requirements were quite common, low capacity, high reliability, longest life expectancy, industrial temperature support.

Bill of Material Lock for all Fortasa SSDs

I was ready to was ready to do another run of my corporate and product presentation, talk about our unique technology, life expectancy verification, product qualification process and our production capability, something I perform on practically every sales call.

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