Aitech SATA Mass Storage PMC/XMC

Aitech Defense Systems Inc., an independent manufacturer of open architecture electronic boards and subsystem level products for harsh, environmentally-demanding defense and aerospace applications, now offers the M224, a single-width SATA mass storage PMC/XMC that consumes a maximum of only 4 W. The new M224 incorporates a specialized thermal frame design for exceptional heat dissipation and uses no moving parts for increased reliability.

 
The rugged, solid-state M224, which features all soldered components, easily integrates with a number of host boards in a variety of harsh applications, such as program and variable data storage, detailed area moving maps with Red/Blue Force tracking, large databases, radar or sonar images as well as software programmable radio ELINT data and other graphical data. 
 
Low risk and low cost application integration is aided by the onboard PCIe and PCI-X controllers combined with the board’s industry standard PMC/XMC connectors.

Automatic detection circuitry configures the M224 for either PMC or XMC operation, enabling the board’s use in either application.
 
The M224’s twin banks of large, programmable NAND Flash, which provide a maximum combined capacity of 128 GB, are each managed by their own quad-channel SSD controller. This enables the tandem memory banks to operate as independent SATA II Flash disks and optimizes the board’s performance by implementing interleaving and parallel operation between the channels to eliminate the low access times normally associated with Flash-based devices.
 
The SSD controllers’ built-in bad block management, auto-wear leveling and error correction ensure reliable high speed operation and minimize the burden on the host processor to extend the life of the Flash media. A dedicated pin routed to the M224’s connectors provides support for external write protection, as well.
 
The onboard RAID processing is set in the hardware to eliminate the need for specially tailored drivers, and supports RAID 0 (striping), 1 (mirroring) and JBOD (concatenation) modes on both Flash disks. The sustained sequential read rate of 170 MB/s and write data rate of 120 MB/s in RAID 0 mode give the M224 exceptional performance.
 
The M224 is available in air-cooled and conduction-cooled versions as well as in three levels of ruggedization depending on shock, vibration and humidity requirements. Low level drivers for VxWorks, Windows and Linux connect to, and take full advantage of, the operating system’s native SATA stacks. No additional software is needed for normal operation.