Flash management software supports non-volatile memories

HCC offers a range of flash management products, which enables customers to choose the most efficient solution depending on their specific product-design goals. Product developers can simulate the complete lifetime of the product and model their use cases leading to accurate decisions that ensure their design is optimised for both cost and reliability. Customers also benefit from HCC’s expert knowledge of issues relating to system fail-safety as well as support for specialist features such as emergency write and security that contribute to overall system reliability.

Adesto’s FusionHD non-volatile memories (NVMs) are designed for next-generation consumer and industrial IoT edge devices. FusionHD serial flash technology builds on the Smart IoT feature set of Adesto’s Fusion family with even more capabilities, patented low-power technology, security features, and increased memory density options. 

FusionHD NVMs can bring system-level advantages to long-life industrial IoT devices such as sensors, meters and other edge devices and controllers. The extended battery life and wide operating voltage range offered by FusionHD NVMs help to prolong the active lifetime of these devices, which are often deployed in remote or inaccessible locations. 

HCC helps optimise target systems for cost, performance, reliability, and battery life by using the features of FusionHD serial flash technology, among them the following:

• Interrupt on completion of an internal programming or erase operation, which helps decrease power consumption and reduces CPU load.
• Small page write/erase units, which help with the design of efficient fail-safe solutions.
• Internal RAM buffers that serve several purposes, including providing a super-efficient mechanism for managing emergency writes.

There are many applications for Adesto’s FusionHD NVMs in industrial, medical monitoring, smart metering, home automation, and consumer electronics applications. For that reason, HCC has four embedded file system products that allow designers to get the most from FusionHD serial flash solutions:

• SafeFLASH, an efficient flash file system.
• TINY flash file system for resource constrained environments.
• SMFS optimised for metering or data-logging type applications.
• SafeFTL flash translation layer, a reliable management layer for FAT-compatible file systems.

“Serial flash memory is increasingly used for critical data storage ranging from over-the-air updates to cost and system metadata,” said Paul Hill, Senior Marketing Director, Adesto. “Ensuring that this data is safe, reliable, and secure under a wide range of normal and potential error conditions is paramount. The software required to manage this data is complex, and HCC provides proven, tested, and robust off-the-shelf file system solutions to meet these demands. Adesto’s FusionHD devices add a number of features that HCC has been able to use to improve system performance and specification.”

Dave Hughes, CEO, HCC Embedded, added: “For nearly 20 years, HCC’s flash management expertise has helped customers get the best performance out of their latest technologies. The Adesto FusionHD technology has made significant technical improvements in serial flash technology. HCC capitalises on its new features to further improve all aspects of the file systems – from build cost to reliability and battery life – compared to more traditional serial flash solutions available today.”