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The PCI Express Mini Card format has become the format of choice for the emerging ultra-mobile PC category. With its small footprint and industry-standard design, the mPCIe format is an ideal fit for embedded solid state storage because it allows for high capacities and high performance while ensuring compatibility in ultra-mobile applications.
Leveraging STEC’s proprietary, high performance MACH4 SSD controller, the Express Mini Card offers extremely high-performance (up to 90MB/s) and high capacities up to 64GB. The result is a no-compromise solid state storage solution providing ultra-mobile system designers with a true plug-n-play storage device, allowing for short design cycles and fast time to market.
Flash memory has quickly become the product of choice for applications requiring high reliability and high tolerance to shock, vibration, humidity, altitude, and temperature, especially important to mobile applications. Because the MACH4 PCI Express Mini Card uses NAND flash technology (e.g. no moving parts), it is more reliable and has much lower latency compared to a traditional hard disk drive, while consuming half the power (approximately 1 watt compared to 2 watts for a typical mobile hard disk drive). STEC’s MACH4 PCI Express Mini Card also adheres to the PCI-SIG Express Mini Card mechanical specification as well as industry compliance and regulatory standards including UL, FCC, RoHS, and ATA-7. This combined with a proprietary state-of-the-art flash memory controller supporting key flash management features including advanced wear-leveling and error checking and correction as well as drive monitoring (SMART), provides OEMs with the flexibility to address customer-specific applications with the industry’s highest reliability and endurance.
Embedded system designers require small format, cost-effective SSD solutions that do not compromise performance or reliability. The STEC UM-SSD solution offers one of the industry's smallest SSD grade solutions complete with enterprise-class flash management.
With a state-of-the-art SSD grade controller, the UM-SSD offers all of the performance, reliability, and data integrity of many enterprise-class SSDs but in a much smaller format to make it easy to integrate into space-constrained system designs. The UM-SSD industry-standard PCI Express Card mechanical design and extensive firmware support also provides high compatibility making for simplified system integration.
Finally, because the UM-SSD uses solid state storage technology, it provides substantial benefits over mobile hard drives in the areas of power, environmental support, and reliability (as a result of no moving parts).
• PCI Express Form Factor
• Built-in power-down data protection
• Support the use of MLC NAND
• Full RoHS 6/6 compliance
• Full data-path protection with built-in 8-bit ECC engine for highest reliability
• Built-in Wear Leveling and Block Management for ultra-high endurance
• Commercial and Industrial Operating Temperature Range
STEC’s proprietary state-of-the-art flash memory controllers provide high data reliability and endurance. The built-in data-path protection with 8-bit ECC engine and sophisticated wear leveling algorithms ensure the greatest data integrity and longest possible life out of NAND flash technology. Based on high quality components, STEC solid state storage solutions provide an unparalleled MTBF of more than 8,000,000 hrs. In the event of host system power loss, data integrity is further assured via STEC’s power-down data protection methodology ensuring that critical data is not lost or corrupted.
STEC’s TotalDriveProtection provides multiple levels of security including password write-protection (enabled in hardware and software), read-protection, secure partitioning, and custom ID strings to allow customers to protect preloaded content from piracy.
Support for SATA or ATA interfaces as well as support for Ultra DMA, MWDMA, and PIO operating modes makes MACH4 SSD one of the most flexible storage solutions for system designers to implement. And because STEC develops its own controller and firmware, the MACH4 SSD can be adapted to meet a wide variety of timing and software requirements.
