Innodisk Create iSLC Flash Technology

Innodisk Corp., designer and manufacturer of SSDs for industrial applications, announces its development of a new patent pending technology, iSLC.

            Drive Write Sustainability Comparison:
            iSLC Increases Demands on Endurance

X – Year, Y = Flash Type
Notes: Based on 32GB SSD with 32GBx10 per day – 320GB/day
iSLC has 30,000 Program Erase Cycles: SSDs with iSLC can sustain 32GB capacity drive writes per day for over 7 years, delivering a lifespan that is suitable for industrial and enterprise applications.

By using quality, preselected MLC NAND flash and patented flash management algorithms, iSLC nearly approaches SLC performance and reliability in a more cost effective solution.

In a recently released white paper, Innodisk explores MLC NAND flash; while more economical, it lacks the reliability and performance needed for mission critical industrial applications. MLC’s popularity has been mainly driven by price. Innodisk’s in-house R&D firmware team recognizes the gap in the marketplace for a flash Storage solution that maintains high performance, reliability and endurance comparable to SLC Technology, but without the price tag. To provide a solution for this gap in the market, Innodisk developed iSLC.

iSLC technology reprograms the two bits per cell of MLC into one bit per cell, which increases the sensitivity delta between each level. This practice enables the NAND flash to perform similar to a SLC flash-based solution. The average endurance of iSLC can surpass 30,000 Program/Erase (P/E) cycles, which increases the lifespan of the drive over MLC flash by a multitude. Additionally, write performance for iSLC is about 70% faster than MLC on SATA II.

Innodisk has designed iSLC to perform as close as possible to SLC flash, with a price point similar to MLC flash-based products. This technological development offers a cost effective way for industrial applications, such as kiosks and POS, to perform at a high capacity while still keeping a tight control on expenditures.

Innodisk has iSLC integrated into many of the SATA II product lines. SATA III (6.0Gb/s) iSLC products will become available in the second quarter of 2013.

More about iSLC technology clicking on this link, and then click iSLC White Paper under Download Resources on the left side of the page (registration needed)