Product of the Week: Innodisk’s Industrial-Grade PCIe 4.0 SSDs

February 22, 2022

Story

The more data that’s generated, the more that needs to be stored. The more data that needs to be stored, the more bandwidth and capacity required from storage solutions.

In consumer electronics and the data center, technology roadmaps are in place to help offset the exponential demand for data acquisition and storage. But what about industrial computing?

With support for PCIe 4.0 recently added to many embedded processors, SSDs now have access to 16 GT/s of throughput over the high-speed serial interconnect – double what’s available in version 3.0. Now, Innodisk Industrial-Grade PCIe 4.0 SSDs are capitalizing on this bandwidth revolution in a suite of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) storage solutions that meet the -40 to 85°C temperature range requirements of the industrial market.

Each new Innodisk SSD module contains x4 PCIe 4.0 lanes while also maintaining backwards compatibility with PCIe Gen 3 for use in legacy systems. The DRAM-less devices are built on 112-layer BiCS5 3D TLC NAND flash technology, and available in a wide range of capacities ranging from 128 GB – 4 TB:

• M.2 2280 4TE (256 GB - 2TB)
• M.2 2280 4TG-P (256 GB - 2TB)
• M.2 2280 4TG2-P (128 GB - 4TB)

To ensure high read/write efficiency and extended SSD life given the higher throughput and harsh deployment settings, the Industrial-Grade PCIe 4.0 SSDs integrate new capabilities such as Namespace. Namespace technology divides the SSD into zones that each contain groups of data with similar access and usage patterns as opposed to randomly writing and accessing data across the silicon. This reduces the number of read and write operations significantly, yielding better efficiency and longer SSD life spans.

Of course, the SSDs support hardware-accelerated AES-256 encryption, the Trusted Computing Group’s (TCG’s) Opal 2.0 security subsystem specification for self-encrypting drives (SED), and are fully compliant with the compliance with NVM Express 1.3 specification.

These and other features make the Innodisk Industrial-Grade PCIe 4.0 SSD series a default storage solution for industrial AIoT use cases ranging from 5G edge servers to smart cameras to smart streetlights, and virtually anything in between.

The Innodisk Industrial-Grade PCIe 4.0 SSDs in Action

To meet the demands of industrial environments, the industrial-grade SSDs also bake in reliability features such as an anti-vibration design and heat-spreader to dissipate heat from the storage controller. These are augmented by technologies that add built-in layers of robustness, reliability, and data protection.

The first of these is a low-density parity check (LDPC) error-correcting code (ECC) engine that protects data as it is transferred across various points within the SSD itself. This ECC code can provide end-to-end data path protection (ETEP) by maintaining data integrity as it is transmitted from the SSD controller to the embedded SRAM and finally stored in NAND flash memory.

Other proprietary Innodisk hardware and software technologies in the SSDs include:

• iDataGuard uses an algorithm to halt SSD performance when it detects drops in voltage. The algorithm informs the SSD controller, which completes the last in-process operation and stops taking commands from the host to ensure that stored data is retained and can be accessed when power is restored.
• iPowerGuard also protects the storage device from power loss during startup and shutdown.
• iCell technology provides an emergency charge, if needed.
• iSMART disk health monitoring ensures the SSD is operating at optimum levels

Getting Started with Innodisk Industrial-Grade PCIe 4.0 SSDs

For those interested in purchasing Industrial-Grade PCIe 4.0 SSDs from Innodisk, the SSDs are available now and backed by a long-term supply guarantee.

For more information, visit www.innodisk.com or check out the resources below.

Additional Resources:

• Innodisk Flash SSD Products: www.innodisk.com/en/products/flash-storage/ssd