FORTASA BLOG

Industrial Solid State Storage Products Deliver Best Reliability and Life Span - Go For The Gold

As the world is watching the 2014 Sochi Olympics we reflect on our device portfolio and technical capability as we challenge ourselves to provide a Gold Medal level of product and service to make us memorable and dependable for our customers..

Gold Medal In Product and Service

Product Engineering - we are the technical experts in Solid State Storage design. We select the best on breed components to fulfill the most demanding customer requirements.  Whether the customer most important criteria is performance, power budget, endurance, temperature or environmental tolerance - we have an ability to propose a custom solution for the specific customer needs. Our vast experience with high speed and high reliability board design allows us to lay out the PCB with maximum tolerances for reliable operation.

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Industrial SSD or Flash Cards - Most Reliable Storage Choice for Embedded Storage

Friends frequently ask me, "What is an Industrial SSD, and how does it differ from the one I buy on Amazon and Ebay ?".  This question is quite loaded. From the first look, the Industrial and what I call "Consumer" versions of SSDs or Flash cards seem to be rather similar. Both made of semiconductors and Flash memory, both have similar capacity and the performance of the "Consumer" devices oftentimes is better than that of the "Industrial" type. On top of that, the "Industrial" SSDs typically cost more than twice than the "Consumer" ones. So what is the difference ??????

The answer is, however, quite elaborate. Industrial SSDs and Flash Cards are manufactured with the sole focus of providing superior reliability. This focus drives every facet of product development, from design considerations, component selection, test methodology, product tracking and Failure Analysis. Lets have a more detailed understanding:

Design Considerations

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Best Algorithm to Improve Flash SSD Life Expectancy - Static Data Wear Leveling

Unlike Dynamic Data Wear Leveling, Static Wear Leveling algorithm not only rotates the dynamic blocks, but also the blocks that store a static data partition. In many embedded applications, a significant portion of memory space is actually used by a large static partition such as OS or Application program files. Typically these files are written once and read multiple times as on the device power-up sequence. The large static data block leaves only a small memory space for file updates or data recording. Due to such unbalanced usage,  the dynamic memory area gets extensive wear. Once any of these high usage blocks approach the endurance limit, and begin to lose data, the whole drive would fail. To avoid this situation, a Static Wear leveling algorithm was implemented.

When the device is in a standby (non-active) mode, the algorithm drives the Flash controller to re-write the static partition from the less used blocks to the dynamic partition of the higher used blocks. By readjusting the block usage, the memory wear will be evenly spread between the static and dynamic memory partitions. The algorithm defines a usage threshold which when reached by any one memory block initiates a static partition rotation, or swapping, of the highest usage blocks for the lowest usage ones.  This process typically occurs in the background while the Flash controller is in a stand-by or non-active mode.

While the Static Data Wear Leveling algorithm can slow down Flash Drive operation during the swapping sequence and also increases the overall block usage due to the rotation overhead, it is nonetheless the best method to maximize the SSD life.

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Improving Flash SSD Endurance - Dynamic Data Wear Leveling

As previously described, Flash memory inherently has limited endurance (number of program and erase cycles) before it starts to fail and information is no longer reliably retained. The intrinsic component endurance is specifically stated in the respective component data sheet. Typically, the inherent endurance is 3000 cycles for MLC NAND Flash and 60,000 cycles for SLC NAND Flash. In managed Flash storage devices such as SSDs or Flash cards, the expected life of the device is further reduced due to a Write Amplification phenomenon. To reverse this rapid degradation a Dynamic Weal Leveling algorithm was introduced.

At initialization, the Flash controller allocates all the formatted (unused) memory blocks into a unused block pool and sets up the usage counter for each block. With Dynamic Wear Leveling, every time a host would write new data to the storage module, Flash controller would select the block with least amount of usage and write the new data to it. Every time a host would erase a file, the Flash controller would free up (format) a block and place it in the unused block pool ranked by the amount of usage this block had gone through. This way with every new write or erase sequence the block usage would adjust and spread the memory wear from highest used block to the lowest use block. While this algorithm is highly beneficial to the dynamic (updated and erased) data, it doesn't improve the Flash wear for drive usage with large static partition, as with OS system files which are written once and don't typically get moved or updated, A complementary algorithm to spread the usage of the Flash blocks that store static data is called Static Data Wear Leveling.

Please contact Fortasa toreceive more information about Fortasa product reliability.

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