We told you about the DRAM goodies from Innodisk yesterday, now lets take a look at their Computex flash offerings. If you need industrial NGFF, single chip SSDs, or even exploding disks, you are in the right place.
The first thing that SemiAccurate saw on the flash side was hidden among the industrial flash modules, it was a SATAe/NGFF module. The particular one on display was an M.2-SATA version that comes in 4-64GB capacities with 300/70MBps R/W performance. There are versions that come in sizes up to 128GB and run at speeds of up to 460/270MBps should that not be enough. While industrial NGFF is still uncommon, by next year it won’t be.
nanoSSD is smaller than microSSD
Remember the SanDisk single chip SSD from a few years ago? It is now a JEDEC standard, MO-276 to be precise, so everyone can make compatible devices. Innodisk does things a bit better with their nanoSSD by integrating all the passive components on to the package. This will drop yield a bit but it makes things so much easier and tidier for the device makers it is silly. This is a really good thing.
Before you comment about the passive devices on that board above, this one has 256MB of DRAM for caching. The passives are there to support the DRAM, if you don’t want caches you don’t need anything on the board but traces. Innodisk nanoSSDs come in 4-32GB capacities for the moment but that will assuredly grow.
Press a button and this will explode
This brings us to a quaint little technology that Innodisk calls “Physical Destroy Solution”, the ultimate security feature. If this sounds like something from the movies where you send a command to a device and it literally blows up, that is what this technology does. Take a look at that massively oversized bank of caps under the SemiAccurate watermark, any guesses as to what this does? If you send it a command, it literally dumps enough voltage into the flash chips to physically destroy them. Click, boom. Literally speaking. If you need this level of security you need Physical Destroy Solution. If you don’t need it, it sure would make for some hilarious if expensive practical jokes. “Don’t click that button Bob, it will make your HD explode!” What do you think Bob would do next?
Innodisk was also showing off a prototype HD with some thermal and write lifetime sensors. Neither of them are new tech but Innodisk has a feedback loop between them to optimize performance based on temperature and wear to keep things going consistently and reliably. More novel is the SSD can report back to the user via a monitoring program or email to report glitches or just give status updates. While most data centers have this in common use at the system level, the industrial automation set can be woefully behind. This type of reporting could prove very useful there.
Last up is the same type of coating that Innodisk was offering on the DRAM side. You can get a silicone conformal coating on most Innodisk SSDs that will meet MIL-I-460S8C standards, no need to explain that one to our readers though. If you happen to not be familiar with this common spec though, it is moisture-proof, dust-proof, most chemical-proof, and is stable over a wide range of temperatures. It is also flexible as most silicone is, provides protection against physical damage, and shields against UV too. While silicone is not complete protection against electrical shocks, it is good enough to prevent problems from the majority of random electrical discharges.
If you want SSDs that can survive anything, many companies offer them. Innodisk does too and will drape it in silicon as well. They can even offer you literally one chip SSD solutions, plug it in and play. Should that not be enough for your needs they can even offer you an SSD that will literally explode on command, that is quite unique. While few people actually need that feature, how many of you can say you wouldn’t simply want to have one? I know I do.S|A
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Charlie Demerjian
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