Exascend Introduces Industrial Rugged PCIe Gen3 and SATA3 SSD

Published

December 9, 2020

TAIPEI, TAIWAN / ACCESSWIRE / December 9, 2020 / Exascend, Inc., a leading service-driven high-performance storage solution provider, announced the availability of new line of thermally optimized, ultra-capacity, high speed and PCIe Gen3 NVMe and SATA3 SSD products based on Marvell's industry leading SSD controller.

Exascend PI3 (PCIe Gen3x4) product series are Industrial grade (-40 – 85°C operating temperature) SSD with enterprise performance features (sustain high speed and low latency) available in standard U.2 up to 8TB, M.2 2280 up to 4TB. Legacy part such as SI3 Series (industrial SATA3) are still available with capacity up to 4TB and will be a long-term support item.

Design and optimized for industrial and rugged applications, where unpredictable operating environment, wide temperature fluctuations, thermal and airflow restrictions pose significant design challenges for small form factor, especially when SATA3 is migrating to high performance PCIe NVMe SSDs; PI3 series products are ideal for incoming merge of AI in IoT, edge server storage, transportation, telemetry, autonomous driving, high-speed video capture and data logging, and other emerging high-performance rugged data storage applications where traditional single tasking is now required to do on site multi-tasking and complex high level analytical algorithms.

"The new generation of industrial applications requires lower latency, consistent QoS, and ever increasing sustained high performance under all operation conditions. PI3 SSD product innovates by fusing Exascend enterprise performance storage with proprietary thermal management technology and extended temperature support. With the introduction of our rugged PCIe SSD for rugged applications," said Exascend CEO Frank Chen, "Exascend is very proud in achieving a significant milestone for the global storage industry. The accelerating trend of Flash adoption for rugged applications, industrial automation, edge computing has called upon service focused companies like Exascend to deliver enterprise performance solutions under wide temperature operating conditions — two conflicting requirements by conventional perceptions. By leveraging our deep expertise in SSD technology, Exascend is able to accomplish both requirements simultaneously and advance our mission to push the boundary of possibilities."

Hardware-based AES 256 Encryption Engine with TCG OPAL 2.0 support

Both PI3 and SI3 series products support TCG Opal 2.0, using hardware encryption technology to secure data stored. By encrypting the entire drive, users do not need to worry about their data being accessed if the drive, laptop, or mobile device is stolen or lost.

In addition to standard PCIe NVMe and SATA3 features set, Exascend products are engineered with innovative features and optimizations based on proprietary technologies for rugged applications.

Exascend Adaptive Thermal Control

Exascend's patented algorithm continuously monitors drive thermals, and regulates drive performance to improve SSD reliability, simultaneously enhancing sustained performance and quality of service (QoS) by 10X. Below a couple examples of performance benchmark in thermal chamber simulating operation temperature under wide temperature range.

Exascend's 8TB U.2 provides sustained write performance at 1,500MB/s in temperature range from-40~75°C, and sustained write at 950MB/s under high temperature 75~85°C.

M.2 is far more challenging as thermal-dissipation is very limited in such small form factor, the higher the capacity, the more difficult it gets. Nevertheless, Exascend's 4TB M.2 can provide a 1,450MB/s sustained write under -40~75°C, 700MB/s sustained write at 75~85°C.

SATA3 is a very matured product in the market, peak performance to reach up to 500MB/s is already a standard specification, but to offer a straight line sustained write at 500MB/s under wide temperature range is Exascend's in-house firmware know-how.

Exascend Accelerated Boot

We recognize system responsiveness is a critical aspect of user experience, high capacity Flash storage may take minutes to respond after power cycle, negatively impacting responsiveness. Accelerated boot is our unique technology, by streamlining initialization to prioritize system response, and layering initialization to allow background error correction and recovery, we achieve near instantaneous drive response upon power on, reducing boot time from minutes to seconds, dramatically improving system responsiveness.

Exascend Rugged Feature Suite*

Secure Firmware Update
Tamper Proof Firmware Encryption
Firmware Rollback Protection
Optional Power Loss Protection
Write Protect
pSLC support
Industrial Temperature Range
Enterprise Performance, High QoS, Low Latency
Fix Major BOM (Controller/Flash/Firmware)

Exascend Deep Customization Service*

Exascend's platform-based technology enables deep customization to drive value-add services. We provide engineering support on further performance, power, thermal optimizations and security, vendor unique features on PI3 / SI3 products.

Sample available now

Optional Value-Add Features

– Thermal, performance and power budget tuning

– Configurable capacity and provisioning

– Configurable DWPD (drive writes per day) for extended endurance and life

– Customizable LED status lighting

– Customized drive SMART status and telemetry data

– Write protect or read-only mode for security purpose

– Integration support of drive life monitoring

– Rugged Erase Trigger with Quick Erase and Sanitize Erase

– Custom form factor and connector interface

– Fixed major BOM (Controller / Flash / Firmware)

– Optional leaded SMT process

– Exclusive factory data recovery service

Target Applications

– Factory Automation

– IoT Gateway, Transportation

– Edge Server

– Medical Equipment

– Telemetry Devices

– 5G Telecommunication

– Autonomous Driving

– Surveillance

Product Specification

About Exascend

Exascend is a service-oriented provider of innovative standard and custom storage solutions, specialized in low power, high performance, and high reliability products. Since its founding, the company has been awarded more than 45 US and worldwide patents on storage related technologies. With full lines of enterprise and industrial PCIe NVMe, SATA3 SSD, CFast, CFexpress cards, and DRAM product offerings, Exascend's broad capabilities span across hardware, firmware, software, product engineering, manufacturing, and customization services. "Engineering Inspiration to Innovation" Exascend takes pride in enabling its global customers to push the boundary of possibilities and to differentiate with quality, reliability, and flexibility.