Greenliant now shipping SATA NANDrive

SANTA CLARA, USA: Greenliant Systems, a leader in energy-efficient, highly secure and reliable solid state storage products, has started volume production of its SATA interface NANDrive™ solid state drives (SSDs). The GLS85LS product family has the same pin-out across all capacities—2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB and higher in the future—which simplifies system-level board design.

Measuring 14mm x 24mm x 1.95mm, in a 145 ball grid array (BGA), 1mm ball pitch package, SATA NANDrive devices are one of the smallest SSDs, giving OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) flexibility when designing data storage into their embedded products. The BGA package can be soldered directly onto the motherboard—no extra connectors are needed—providing added stability to the SSD.

Compatible with the latest generation chipsets, SATA NANDrive combines Greenliant's proprietary high-performance NAND flash controller with up to eight NAND flash die in a multi-chip package. As a fully integrated SSD—when compared to using discrete NAND and a controller—NANDrive improves customers' time-to-market by eliminating the need to procure and qualify multiple chips.

"As NAND flash memory continues to rapidly shrink, making it difficult for embedded products to keep up, a standard-interface storage solution that doesn't require redesigns at each new geometry node is needed," said Michael Yang, Principal Analyst for Memory & Storage, iSuppli Corporation. "The timing is right for BGA package SSDs like NANDrive."

"By offering NANDrive with a SATA interface, we are providing our automotive, industrial, medical and enterprise networking customers an essential building block for their embedded systems," said Bing Yeh, CEO of Greenliant Systems. "Products that use NANDrive—such as robotics, ruggedized tablets, blade servers and car infotainment systems—have unique storage requirements. They need SSDs that will reliably preserve data integrity, with long operating life and 'military-grade' security options, which are Greenliant's areas of expertise and where NANDrive excels."

The addition of SATA II-compliant GLS85LS devices builds on the success of Greenliant's PATA (GLS85LD and GLS85LP) products, expanding its portfolio of NANDrive embedded SSDs.