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Fast Purge flash SSDs directory & articles
Fast Purge SSDs ..
adpative DSP IP in flash SSDs
DSP IP in SSDs ....
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SSD reliability ..
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industrial SSDs ..
image shows Megabyte's hot air balloon - click to read the article SSD power down architectures and acharacteristics
SSD power loss ..
the fastest SSDs  sorted by interface and form factor - click to read article
the fastest SSDs ..
SSD SoCs controllers
SSD controller chips ..
SSD myths - write endurance
SSD endurance .
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image shows Kiilibyte the mouse in a pose suggested by the 1960s tv series - the Avengers - click for larger image
If Megabyte got into serious trouble he'd
call - Help! - to his niece Kilobyte who was a
great fan of Emma Peel in the Avengers.

click here for more info about the Guardian SSD
highest integrity 2.5" military SATA SSDs
with SnapPurge and AES-256 encryption
TRRUST-STOR - from Microsemi

WD SiliconDrive   - click for more info
2.5" SiliconDrives
from Western Digital

Targa Series 4 - 2.5 inch SCSI flash disk
2.5" removable military SSDs
for airborne apps - GbE / SATA / USB
from Targa Systems

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"Fast purge SSDs are the very antithesis of ideal consumer / enterprise SSDs - because they are designed to defeat data recovery. "
...from:- fast purge flash SSDs
.

Notes from SSD market history

The product shown below, from Memtech (acquired by STEC in 2005) is an example of a 3.5" PATA SSD product featured here on StorageSearch.com in 2004 - the AT3550 Wolverine.

See also:- animal brands in the SSD market
.
low profile, high capacity  3.5" IDE military temperature range solid state disks from Memtech
3.5" low profile IDE
mil temp solid state disks
from Memtech

Comments from SSD market history

Austin Semiconductor launched their SSD
on chip in September 2007 and advertised
it here on StorageSearch.com

Commercial temperature range true SSDs
designed to fit in 1 inch and smaller spaces
had been available from other vendors since
about 2002 - but in 2007 many new oems
entered the mil SSD chip market.

for details click on the links below
SSDoC from Austin Semiconductor - click for more info
Solid State Disk on Chip
from Austin Semiconductor

military / rugged data SSD - news

new SSD module for mobile military systems

Editor:- April 22, 2013 -Curtiss-Wright today announced the availability of conduction cooled secure 1TB SATA SLC SSD modules for use in its rugged 4 port NAS module which is designed to fit on an ARINC tray.

The Vortex SSD - designed for applications such as helicopters, UAVs and mobile radar systems - is certified to FIPS 140-2 and provides 4 modes of key management.


Crocus gets funding for x8 multibit magnetic semiconductor memory

Editor:- April 8, 2013 - Crocus Technology today announced it has been awarded a contract from IARPA to develop an 8-bit per cell memory based on its Magnetic Logic Unit technology.

This will greatly reduce the energy consumed per written-bit compared to any other memory technology, including DRAM, Flash, SRAM and MRAM.

Douglas Lee, VP, product development at Crocus compared the 8 bits per cell which the company thinks it can get from its MLU technology with the state-of-the-art in nand flash - which is 3-4 bits per cell and also compared to alternative magnetic semiconductor technologies like MRAM - which is still only 1 bit per cell storage (SLC).

Editor's comments:- here's some context.

If it were possible to do x8 MLC flash - then Samsung's model 840 SSD would have 16TB capacity instead of the 512GB which it has using x3 (TLC) - which is the state of the art bits per cell shipping in a regular 2.5" SSD. But don't get too excited by this comparison as x8 flash currently exists only in the realm of science fiction.

Having multibit capability in a magnetic semiconductor cell will undoubtedly be a breakthrough for that type of non volatile technology. But the density of such x8 MLU memories would still be 100x smaller than today's flash. The good news is that unlike flash - MLU will operate at very hot ambient temperatures - past 200 degrees C.


Steve Picot joins ViON as VP of Federal Sales

Editor:- February 18, 2013 - ViON today announced that Steve Picot has recently been named VP of Federal Sales.

Just prior to joining ViON, Mr. Picot was an 8 year veteran of Cisco Systems where he was the Director of Operations. Mr. Picot was honorably discharged from the US Marine Corps as a Captain after serving over 7 years as an AH-1 helicopter pilot.


Diablo sets up compatibility team for new SSD interface

Editor:- January 29, 2013 - Diablo Technologies today announced it has set a compatibility advisory team for its new SSD interface - which the company is apparently positioning as a faster alternative to PCIe SSDs.


experimental technique eliminates flash endurance limit

Editor:- December 2, 2012 - An article in IEEE Spectrum - Flash Memory Survives 100 Million Cycles - summarizes a recent research paper by Macronix - which described an experimental technique to redesign flash cells to improve endurance.

The technique - which StorageSearch.com does not think is feasible to scale for commercially competitive memory densities - involves designing addressable heaters in the memory array which can pulse upto 800 degrees C for a few milliseconds. This thermal "refreshing cycle" anneals the chip material and heals common wear-out defects while also enabling the cells to be run faster.

"Afterward, we realized that there was no new physics principle invented here, and we could have done this 10 years ago" said Hang-Ting Lue, the project director at Macronix


Microsemi' speeds up fast SSD erase

Editor:- October 23, 2012 - Microsemi today announced a new faster erasing 2.5" industrial SSD.

The SECURRE-Stor (upto 128GB) can perform a first level software fast-erase in 0.1S followed by a fully destructive hardware erase in less than 10 seconds.

The company says applications include secure laptops, automated teller machines and other systems currently using hard disk drives that may need to be physically destroyed to prevent data from getting into the wrong hands.


temperature related data rot in flash SSDs... a blog by WD

Editor:- July 26, 2012 - A good analysis of temperature affects on flash data integrity can be seen in a recent blog - about intrinsic temperature related data rot in flash SSDs - by Eli Tiomkin, Director, Business Development, WD Solid State Storage who says (among other things) - "Over time, NAND cells may lose enough charge and flip enough bits to overwhelm the ECC capability of the drive controller and cause data loss."

Eli Tiomkin's useful table lets you look up the SSD storage temperature and see how much more quickly the native flash will corrupt - if a suitable controller or healing process isn't in place to detect changes and fix them....read the article


CWCDS offers 5TB version of SANbric SSD JBOD

Editor:- June 19, 2012 - today Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions announced a new version of its FC compatible SSDs the SANbric which supports just under 5TB and weighs about 5 lbs and is designed for deployment in high speed rugged data streaming apps such as on-board wide body aircraft, and helicopter platforms.


Microsemi eliminates weakest link in high capacity SATA SSDs

Editor:- April 9, 2012 - Microsemi today announced it is offering a new type of ruggedized SATA connector option for its its TRRUST-Stor SSDs which provides a complete vibration-resistant solution which eliminates pin fretting and intermittent disconnects to assure long-term dependability.

"The weakest link in many embedded applications is the connector, which can sabotage the operation of critical hardware," said B J Heggli, VP of Strategic Development for Microsemi. "Our new connector family protects against the effects of severe shock and vibration, which safeguards the flow of data. As a result, we can now offer customers what is perhaps the most secure and rugged SSD available on the market."


TCS ships 200GB fast erase MIL-STD-810 2.5" SSD

Editor:- January 24, 2012 - TCS today announced shipments of a rugged 200GB 2.5" SLC SSD which has has been verified by outside labs to meet MIL-STD-810 requirements for shock, vibration, temperature range, temperature shock, humidity and altitude.

The new Galatea SSD has 40K IOPS performance, includes 128-bit AES encryption and can fast erase the full drive in less than 15 seconds.

"Few solid-state drives combine the quality, data capacity and ruggedization features of Galatea," said Michael Bristol, senior VP and GM of TCS' Government Solutions Group. "It is ideal for a wide range of extreme industrial and defense applications, including oil and gas exploration, avionics and data logging in a variety of air, land and sea vehicles. Galatea combines superior access latency and power consumption performance with long-term reliability."

Editor's comments:- I hadn't heard of TCS before in the SSD market - and I feel uncomfortable when I see a significant new SSD product pop out from seemingly nowhere. But then I recognized one of the legacy products names - Triton and sure enough TCS is the new identity for Trident Space & Defense - which was acquired a year ago.

I googled "Galatea" - and I'd like to think it was named after one of the Harry Potter characters - who taught defence against the dark arts.

Later today:- Charlie Cassidy who is Director of the Advanced Products Group at TCS contacted me to say - "I thought I would let you in on the "secret" of the Galatea name. No Harry Potter involved, we didn't even realize that connection. Our SSDs (Triton, Proteus, Galatea) are named after themoons of Neptune - paying homage to the Trident heritage."


Conduction cooled rugged NAS SSDs find seats in war-planes

Editor:- November 1, 2011 - Curtiss-Wright today announced that it has received a contract from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics to provide its rugged conduction cooled NAS SSDs - Vortex CNS products - to the U.S. Air Force's HC/MC-130J Super Hercules aircraft program.

The initial order is valued at $800,000, with a potential lifetime contract value estimated at $7.5 million.

Editor's comments:- using ethernet connected rugged SSDs on-board transport is a well established idea. Back in 2002 we ran ads for an early NAS flash SSD - a product called the NAS-168F.

Some of the SSDs used in military projects nowadays are very sophisticated network devices as well as being very rugged. For example the TuffServ 480 - an iSCSI SSD system designed by Ampex .

Meanwhile if you're talking about luggable SSD storage for real-time data capture - Texas Memory Systems offers a 4U specially shielded variant of their enterprise rackmount SSDs for airborne applications - called the RamSan-640.

At the other end of the weight scale - Targa's 2.5" Removable DTU's are small enough to be panel mounted in cockpit systems.


SMART samples new MIL SATA 3 SSD

Editor:- October 26, 2011 - SMART today announced imminent sampling of a SATA 3 version of its MIL-STD-810 compliant 2.5" SSD family - which includes encryption and fast erase.

The new Xcel-200 provides from 60GB to 240GB SLC capacity, 500MB/s sequential R/W speeds and 60K/40K random R/W IOPS. It operates at standard industrial temperature ranges and is certified for operation at altitudes up to 80,000 ft.


Fusion-io can do secure erase in less than 60 seconds

Editor:- September 15, 2011 - Fusion-io today announced that its new SureErase data sanitization tool has been confirmed as meeting Department of Defense sanitization standards by the Defense Information Systems Agency.

SureErase enables users to securely remove/erase all data on any ioMemory-based technology, following DoD/NIST standards, regardless of capacity, in less than 1 minute.

Editor's comments:- although that sounds like a long time - relative to fast purge SSDs (and it is too long for some applications) nevertheless when you take into account that many of Fusion-io's PCIe SSDs have multi-terabyte capacities - it's impressive. See also:- disk sanitizers


I wish I had an SSD in Iraq

Editor:- August 23, 2011 - the problems caused by sand blowing into hard drives in the context of a desert war - is the subject of a recent blog by Mark Flournoy, VP of Government & Defense at STEC.

Among other things this article shows the consequences of data storage failures. It's the best blog I've seen so far on STEC's previously anemic SSD blog site. ...read the article .


Microsemi reports shake rattle and roll SSD results

Editor:- May 19, 2011 - Microsemi today announced that its TRRUST-STOR (2.5" rugged SSDs) are the industry's first SSDs to pass zero-failure testing at vibration levels that are consistent with the industry's most severe environments.

"No other SSD manufacturers have published zero-failure results at this level of vibration testing, which was conducted while our drives were fully operational, reading and writing data," said Jack Bogdanski, director of marketing for Microsemi. "The ability for SSDs to perform flawlessly under adverse environmental conditions is becoming increasingly important for applications where it is critical that data be protected at all times."

Microsemi's SSD units were pre-conditioned at 85°C for 336 hours.


Emphase launches 2.5" MIL SSD family

Editor:- May 11, 2011 - Emphase today launched a new range of rugged, MIL-STD-810F compliant 2.5" SATA SLC SSDs - which are currently available with upto 128GB capacity.

The MIL-SPEC S5 SSD has R/W speeds upto 170 / 90MB/sec respectively and fast erase. Should the drive lose power during a protect, erase, or destroy command, the device will resume the operation as soon as power is restored. Standard product has high tolerance for high altitudes, shock, vibration, temperature, and humidity - options include conformal coating.


Fusion-io aims to accelerate MIL bots

Editor:- May 2, 2011 - Fusion-io today announced that it will participate in the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration - an annual event that engages cutting-edge information technology focusing on operational shortfalls identified by combatant commanders and government agencies.

"More than ever, rapid interpretation of multiple points of data in real-world, wartime environments can mean the difference between life or death for soldiers and civilians," said Fred Vasofsky, Fusion-io Director of Federal Systems. "Fusion-io understands how critically important it is for warfighters and analysts to be able to quickly and correctly interpret field data. Through our participation in CWID, our military leaders will be able to assess how our technology can make a significant contribution to the defense and disaster response-related activities of our nation and allies."

Editor's comments:- many early SSD makers started in the defense market and then later diversified into civilian markets. It's been unusual for the flow to go the other way. But this announcement by Fusion-io shows that enterprise technologies which speed critical decision making (by people or bots) can migrate from civilian to defense applications if they are fast enough and deemed to be reliable enough to make a worthwhile difference.


SSD Bookmarks - from Foremay's CTO

Editor:- March 1, 2011 - StorageSearch.com today published SSD Bookmarks - suggested by Jack H Winters, CTO, Foremay .

Jack H Winters' suggestions are focused on the topic of managing data security in flash SSDs (both in working and not working devices). These links take you on a tour of the published state of the art in fast / secure SSD data erase and the related issue of SSD encryption.


CWCEC launches new rugged XMC/PMC SATA SSD

Editor:- December 3, 2010 - Curtiss-Wright launched the XMC-552 - a rugged 256GB XMC/PMC form factor SATA SSD with 200MB/s throughput, fast purge (in 4 seconds), bad block blocking and 128-bit AES encryption - for defense and aerospace applications.


Dataram's SSD ASAP accelerates rocket defense science

Editor:- November 18, 2010 - ever since the first SSD ASAPs came to market just over a year ago - I've been curious to know what type of real customers would get a benefit from this new type of technology.

Dataram this week provided a clue. It says that Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab has purchased and installed Dataram's XcelaSAN acceleration appliance for use in its missile defense research. Dataram also provides server and workstation memory products to JHU/APL.


SMART's new 2.5" defense SSD juggles 30K IOPS

Editor:- October 10, 2010 - SMART announced it is sampling a new 2.5" 200GB SATA SLC flash SSD for mission-critical defense and industrial applications.

The Xcel-100 solid-state drive achieves up to 30,000 IOPS random read/write and 250MB/s sustained read/write. Validated to MIL-STD-810F it's designed to operate in a temperature range that extends from -40°C to +85°C, with the ability to sustain 50g operating shock and 16.4g operating vibration.

The Xcel-100 offers high reliability and data integrity (< 1 in 1017 bits read) that is supported by extensive error-correction and detection capabilities, multi-level data-path and code protection, data-fail recovery, and data-integrity monitoring. The Xcel-100 also supports the ATA-7 Security Erase. feature for applications where data elimination is required.


Texas Memory Systems' founder writes about 20 years of DoD SSDs

Editor:- September 20, 2010 - Holly Frost founder of Texas Memory Systems has written a paper (pdf) which describes how variants of the company's newer SSDs like the RamSan-630 have been used recently by the US DoD and Intelligence Community.

In another article he describes some features of their 1st DoD SSD in 1988. The company launched its 1st commercial enterprise SSDs in 2001 - but has continued evolving its defense based array processing capabilities.


Update on the smallest PATA SSD

Editor:- August 18, 2010 - Micross Components indicated that a future version of its microSSD (the world's smallest PATA SSD - which has a footprint of 14 x 24 x 1.3mm and weighs only 0.8 grams) may be offered with extended operation upto 105 degrees C.


new directory of old style (parallel) SCSI SSDs

Editor:- July 10, 2010 - StorageSearch.com today published a new directory of (parallel) SCSI SSDs.

SCSI SSDs aren't exactly a new topic in the history of the SSD market. I benchmarked a SCSI SSD 20 years ago for use with an embedded SPARC server. And there was a time when 95% of SSD manufacturers made SCSI SSDs. Today that figure is 8%..

This is a market which has resisted the upward suction of the SSD market bubble. Despite that - I know from many reader inquiries that customers with legacy servers, and equipment designers with legacy products still search for SCSI drives - and in many cases SSDs are replacing HDDs - simply because the original hard disk manufacturers have end of lifed SCSI models. But many of the new SCSI SSDs available today aren't simply fossilized versions of old designs. They include new security, performance and reliability features.

As an editor - creating a new SCSI SSD list has been low on my priorities - because I thought the market had nearly gone away - and I hoped I wouldn't have to do it. I was wrong. More SCSI SSDs are being shipped today than at any time in the past. It's never going to be a huge market - but for those of you who have been looking - here it is.


flash SSD integrity architectures for space-craft

Editor:- April 13, 2010 - for those interested in flash SSD data integrity issues - Phil White, President of ECC Technologies has released a white paper - NAND Flash Memories for Spacecraft (doc).

Phil has been working with ECC for almost 37 years and his company is developing future ECC designs to allow systems architects to develop NAND flash memories that are highly reliable and fault-tolerant even if the NAND flash chips themselves are not so reliable.

NASA is using ECC Tek's designs in multiple missions. 2 of the designs are in space at the present time and are working perfectly. Phil White recently wrote a document for NASA and JPL which outlines how to design NAND Flash memories for spacecraft. The 22 page "preview" document excludes confidential data but gives a taste of the technology available for licensing. ...read the article


Radar buffs get 8GB XMC

Editor:- March 25, 2010 - Curtiss-Wright today announced it has doubled the memory from 4GB to 8GB on its MM-617 buffer memory XMC card - which is designed to provide volatile, deep storage for a wide range of military applications including RADAR, signal intelligence, and image processing.

Editor's comments:- customers always want more memory for this type of application. In one project I managed in 1991 - we designed a system which captured radar data and streamed it continuously to 16 x 6U of the fastest COTS memory cards then available at the maximum operating speed of the VMEbus. That required weeding out badly designed backplanes and memory cards - and playing with early generations of Altera FPGAs. It was similar projects streaming to hard disk arrays (and analyzing the data ASAP) where I learned a lot of useful things about storage too.


Viking's DOM MIL certified

Editor:- March 3, 2010 - Viking Modular Solutions today announced that its SATA Cube3 128GB DOM (launched in March 2009) has successfully completed tests pursuant to the MIL-STD-810F specification.


Aitech's new XMC SSD

Editor:- February 18, 2010 - Aitech launched a new model in its family of PMC/XMC SSDs.

The M224 has 128GB capacity, and hardware RAID options which support the onboard flash array. Sustained sequential R/W speeds are 170MB/s and 120MB/s respectively. The M224 is available in air-cooled and conduction-cooled versions as well as in 3 levels of ruggedization depending on shock, vibration and humidity requirements. OS support includes VxWorks, Windows and Linux.

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"...even at sea level - cosmic rays can create silent errors in flash memory - which are harder to detect and fix than in RAM."
...from - Radiation Hardness of Flash and Nanoparticle Memories - cited in the SSD reliability papers

suggested articles and directories

1" SSDs
PATA SSDs
parallel SCSI SSDs
flash SSD capacity - the iceberg syndrome
Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design
the top 50 SSD articles on StorageSearch.com
Clarifying SSD Pricing - where does all the money go?



other useful publications

COTS Journal
Military Embedded Systems
Military & Aerospace Electronics
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Military & Rugged Storage

by Zsolt Kerekes, editor
Military projects started using SSDs as early as the 1970s because they were faster, more rugged and more reliable than hard drives.

By the late 1980s SSDs with standard 5.25" hard disk form factors and interfaces such as SCSI were easily available in the market (and evaluated for projects by the editor) but those were RAM SSDs rather than flash SSDs.

In the late 1980s some military manufacturers had started to offer special modules which could cushion hard drives from vibration. But wide deployments of HDDs in mobile applications were precluded by their unreliability (much worse than today), their inability to operate over extended temperature ranges or at high altitudes without significant data corruption.

Although flash memory products were widely used in embedded military systems - they were mainly used as arrays of chips which were directly compatible with the processor bus - rather than as virtualized hard drives.

By the end of the 1990s true flash SSDs (mostly with a parallel SCSI interface) were more commonplace (for those who could afford them) - and companies such as Adtron, BiTMICRO, Memtech and M-Systems had been evolving flash SSDs to directly replace hard drives in rugged and space constrained applications.

In 1999 - BiTMICRO launched an 18GB 3.5" flash SSD and in the years which followed military flash SSD makers expanded their capabilities with respect to capacity, performance, encryption and sanitization. And at price tags of $10k to $40k per unit they definitely weren't consumer products.

From about 2003 business managers in military SSD companies could see market reports which suggested that the market for SSDs would eventually be much bigger as the declining price of memory brought these products within the budgetary reach of more enterprise SSD users and later became cheap enough for consumers.

Although there are many similarities in the controller architecture and technology of consumer SSDs and military SSDs - because of a shared design heritage - there are important differences too. These go far beyond the MLC vs SLC endurance and data integrity issues which affect some heavy duty (high IOPS) commercial server apps.

What can be confusing, is that some manufacturers offer products for consumer, enterprise, industrial and military markets.

Because there is no standard method for defining what is an SSD and what features are included and what others are not - it's important for specifiers in this market to understand as many of the constituent parts of SSDs as they can - and what part they can play in a successful deployment. That should include a tick list of important features - most of which are not tested in performance evaluations.

I've long held the view that when it comes to reliability technologies - where the military leads- the commercial markets follow typically 5 to 10 years later.

Many of the techniques which are now widely used in enterprise flash SSDs such as wear leveling were pioneered by military and industrial SSD companies.

Other techniques such as SSD power management, thermal and EMI compatibility are lessons which came from rugged industrial and military markets and have a value and utility which many commercial systems designers don't yet fully appreciate. But I'm sure they will when they learn more about SSDs.
this way to the Petabyte SSD
In 2016 there will be just 3 types of SSD in the datacenter.

One of them doesn't exist yet - the bulk storage SSD.

It will replace the last remaining strongholds of hard drives in the datacenter due to its unique combination of characteristics, low running costs and operational advantages.
click to read the article -  reaching for the petabyte SSD - not as scary as you may think ... The new model of the datacenter - how we get from here to there - and the technical problems which will need to be solved - are just some of the ideas explored in this visionary article.
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Fast Purge SSDs when "Rugged" won't do
The need for fast and secure data erase - in which vital parts of a flash SSD or its data are destroyed in seconds - has always been a requirement in military projects.
Fast Purge flash SSDs directory & articles Although many industrial SSD vendors offer products with extended "rugged" operating environment capabilities - and even notebooks SSDs come with encryption - it's the availability of fast data purge which differentiates "truly secure" SSDs which can be deployed in sensitive applications.
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What's the best way to design a flash SSD?
and other questions which split SSD opinion
More than 10 key areas of fundamental disagreement within the SSD industry are discussed in an article here on StorageSearch.com called the the SSD Heresies.
click to read the article - the SSD Heresies ... Why can't SSD's true believers agree upon a single coherent vision for the future of solid state storage? ...read the article
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Power, Speed and Strength in SSD brands
Does what marketers call their SSDs impact who SSD buyers will call?

This article surveys how vendors have played with awesome and mundane words to make their SSDs sound better - with examples from across the whole spectrum of the SSD market - the good, the bad and you know how this goes - because a Clint Eastward movie made 45 years ago is still better known than any SSD today.
accelerating the SSD marketer - click to read article And that's the challenge which wannabe T-Rexes in the SSD market have to meet. ...read the article
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read the article about SSD integrity written by SandForce
Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design
Editor:- Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design is an article - written by Kent Smith Senior Director, Product Marketing, SandForce.

Reliability is the next new thing for SSD designers and users to start worrying about.
read the article about SSD integrity A common theme you will hear from all fast SSD companies is that the faster you make an SSD go - the more effort you have to put into understanding and engineering data integrity to eliminate the risk of "silent errors." ...read the article
1.0" SSDs 1.8" SSDs 2.5" SSDs 3.5" SSDs rackmount SSDs PCIe SSDs SATA SSDs
SSDs all flash SSDs hybrid drives flash memory RAM SSDs SAS SSDs Fibre-Channel SSDs

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