Re: Good (cheap) flash memory chips?


"Mike Matthews" <m1ke.m477hewz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1122328264.484839.142790@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I'm hoping to get into the 20GB range for the drive, something not
> currently offered in comercial drives. Stacking many smaller chips will
> probably be cheaper thant trying to go with a few large ones, no? I'm
> hoping someone has already done a project like this and can point me to
> the chip they used, as too much trial and error is budget prohibitive.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
MemTech do IDE flash drives to 13GB, and in a larger format, flash drives
up to 60GB. Look at:
http://www.dpie.com/storage/at3550.html
They use capacitors, to maintain the supply long enough to guarantee a
write completes when power is removed, which allows them to use a cache
RAM, to reduce the number of memory cycles involved. In common with most
manufacturers here, they also 'walk' the sectors used, to avoid repeated
I/O on a single location, using up the memory life too quickly (they call
this 'active remap'. They also implement error recovery algorithms in the
memory.
There is a lot of work in making a drive like this. You need the IDE
interface (simple), cache controller (relatively simple), systems to
guarantee write completion (power backup), algorithms to get away from
continuously using one sector, the hardware to implement these, and then
ECC handling. You are looking at probably a years work for a couple of
people from a 'standing start', if you have not got experience in this
area...

Best Wishes


.

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