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Who's who in SSD? -
Waitan - by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - February 2015
Waitan is a new name for me in the SSD
market. Its website is only a year old. Nevertheless the company already offers
an interesting range of rugged SSD related products for the industrial,
military and server markets.
In addition to the standard current form
factors you'd expect from many other SSD companies (PCIe SSDs,
2.5" SATA,
PATA and
SAS,
1.8" micro SATA, and
slim MO-297A) the company also offers 2 things I didn't expect to see from a new
company:-
- a rugged SSD
controller - with optional
fast purge. It's
unusual for military SSD makers to offer their controllers as separate products
- but I can understand that there may be big projects in which this could be a
preferred solution. As it enables even tighter cost control and BOM control
than traditional contractual based process agreements.
- 3.5" FC. This
is more often seen in legacy product lines. But it implies there's enough of a
niche market for these bigger older SSDs to make it worth pursuing by a new
entrant to the market.
Part of answering the question - where did all
this SSD design experience come from - can be seen in Waitan's company
description which says it was "founded by a team of SSD industry veterans
from Mtron and
SuperTalent,
both of which were recognized as the industrial pioneers and enablers of SSD
controllers and solid state drives." |
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| Waitan has
embeddable industrial grade ejector for 1.8" microSATA SSDs |
| Editor:- August 5, 2015 - I wasn't
really expecting to see any major product innovations in the embedded
1.8" SSD market - but
even long established markets can spawn specialized developments. |
Something like that can be seen in the recent
launch by Waitan
of a patent pending 1.8" microSATA SSD ejector product with dual propel
pedals for smooth and even ejection for use on PCBs.
Carina Li,
Waitan’s Product Manager says the new connector will enable designers to
deploy 1.8" microSATA SSDs with the same ease and serviceability and EMC
shielding benefits as 2.5" SATA SSDs. ...more info
(pdf) |
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|
zero seconds? or 3 seconds? How much hold up time do you need to make a 2.5"
military SSD reliable? This article examines 2 different extremes of thought as
implemented in current products. |
| hold
up capacitors in 2.5" MIL SSDs | | |
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| "At the evaluation
stage of a new black box for our helicopters our testing burned out the SSD in
the original box maker's design. It was not easy to find an alternative
supplier of SSDs and we didn't have much time because the flight simulation
tests had already been scheduled. We learned about Waitan, told them what we
needed and recommended them to the black box manufacturer for our tests. Now
Waitan is our technology partner for rugged solid state storage solutions." |
| customer story - Waitan StellaHunter
SSDs | | |
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| Waitan launches secure self
destructable SSDs for drone and other hostile military zone applications |
Editor:- February 19, 2015 - Waitan this week
launched a 2.5" SATA SSD with 4TB capacity with special security options
to protect and purge
data if the SSD gets into the wrong hands - the
StellaHunter.
We
believe the remote controlled secure erase and self-destruction functions are
highly valuable for UAV, drone, and other remote controlled and unmanned systems
where data on the systems storage drives is confidential, which needs to be
destroyed from afar during accidents or emergency scenarios said James Zheng,
Waitans CTO.
Editor's comments:- Remotely triggered data
destruction isn't a new idea in secure SSDs - but it hasn't really taken hold in
the past due to the disruptive effect of false positives - such as when a
security perimeter has been incorrectly set up or when a pacifier signal is lost
for a short time for innocent reasons.
For those reasons Waitan's
StellaHunter is triggered by 2 or more preset conditions. Users can also choose
whether the SSD should be reusable after the secure erase or whether the SSD
should have a destructive erase. | | |
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