14 DAY TRIAL // Solid-state drives, flash drives and hybrid units might be versatile and swappable, but they aren't exactly small, which means that they aren't good for tablets or embedded devices and systems. BGA chips are, like the NANDrive that Greenliant just launched.
The type of solid-state drive (more like NAND chip really) that the company has formally launched is the sort suited for industrial systems.
Called eMMC NANDrive, it is an embedded solid-state drive measuring 14 mm x 18 mm. It is a 100-ball BGA package (ball grid array).
Compatible with the eMMC 4.4x and 4.3 standards, the GLS85VM devices (that's the part number) come in both 2-bits-per-cell (MLC) or 1-bit-per-cell (SLC) NAND.
Greenliant didn't specify the capacity, but with SDHC and microSDHC memory cards capable of packing 16 to 32 GB and even 64 GB in such a small package, we can expect decent storage here too.
Then again, it's not the actual capacity that is the main point of emphasis here. Instead, the corporation focuses on the extreme temperature endurance.
Many NAND chips can handle -40 and +85 degrees Celsius / -40 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit, but not during operation. The new Greenliant chips do though.
"From industrial computers and sensors to instrumentation and automotive systems, eMMC has been rapidly adopted by Intel Bay Trail and a growing number of ARM-based platforms," said Nobu Higuchi, vice president of application engineering and product marketing, Greenliant Systems.
"eMMC NANDrive is ideally positioned to serve a variety of high-reliability applications."
All of the new Greenliant embedded SSDs have ECC (error correction code) capabilities, power interrupt data protection and better security than most.
Greenliant's GLS85VM NANDdrive should be available to any interested corporation now. No price is known, because there's not "official" one. It'll be up to clients to negotiate deals.