Greenliant Systems is commencing mass production of the new storage devices

Sep 18, 2013 08:29 GMT  ·  By

When hearing the word SSD, most people probably think of those HDD replacements that look like slightly smaller versions of platter spinners, but the new ones from Greenliant resemble memory cards more.

That is because they are solid-state drives of a different sort, namely SATA NANDrive embedded units designed from SLC NAND Flash chips.

There are two of these NANDrive embedded solid-state drives, with capacities of 16 GB and 32 GB and a small, ball grid array (BGA) form factor.

They are the sort that will be directly soldered on industrial motherboards or integrated boards of some other kind.

The product names of the new SSDs are GLS85LS1016P and GLS85LS1032P, as revealed by Greenliant in its press release.

They use the company's own NAND controller, NANDrive, which boasts ECC capabilities (error correction code), bad block management and advanced wear-leveling algorithms.

"To address applications with long lifecycles, SLC SATA NANDrive will be available up to 10 years through Greenliant's Long-Term Availability (LTA) program," said Chen Tsai, senior vice president, manufacturing operations, Greenliant Systems.

"With the LTA program and new SLC NANDrive products, Greenliant is reiterating its commitment to customers in markets with stringent requirements, such as automotive, avionics, industrial, medical, military and transportation."

Physically, the new SATA NANDrive devices have a 145-ball package (1 mm ball pitch) measuring 14 x 24 x 1.95 mm / 0.55 x 0.94 x 0.07 inches.

There aren't any prices available, because these are industrial/enterprise products whose final cost will depend on negotiation skills and order volume.

Considering the -40 to +85 degrees Celsius temperature resistance (compliance with MIL-STD-883E to withstand harsh conditions), the chips are bound to cost more than normal NAND devices. And Greenliant is a sort of merger of “Green” and “Reliant,” so those traits are, naturally, possessed by the NANDrive, likely adding to the price.