100 Series Industrial Grade UFD Product Manual v2.0
Cactus Technologies
®
2
Supported Standards
1.1.
Cactus Technologies® UFD is fully electrically compatible with the following specification:
•
USB2.0 Specification published by the USB Implementor's Forum
Product Features
1.2.
Cactus Technologies® Industrial UFD contains a high level, intelligent controller. This intelligent
controller provides many capabilities including the following:
•
USB command processing.
•
Management of erasing and programming the flash memory independent of the host system
•
Sophisticated defect managing capabilities (similar to magnetic disk drives).
•
Sophisticated system for error recovery using powerful error correction code (ECC).
•
Intelligent power management for low power operation.
1.2.1. Host and Technology Independence
Cactus Technologies® Industrial UFD appears as a standard USB mass storage device to the host
system. The host computer software simply issues USB commands to the drive as per the USB
specifications. The host software then waits for the commands to complete. The host system does
not get involved in the details of how the flash memory is erased, programmed or read as this is all
managed by the built-in controller in the drive. Also, with the intelligent on-board controller, the
host system software will not require changing as new flash memory evolves. Thus, systems that
support the Cactus Technologies® Industrial UFD products today will continue to work with future
Cactus Technologies® Industrial UFDs built with new flash technology without having to update or
change host software.
1.2.2. Defect and Error Management
Cactus Technologies® Industrial UFD contains a sophisticated defect and error management
system similar to those found in magnetic disk drives. The defect management is completely
transparent to the host and does not consume any user data space.
The soft error rate for Cactus Technologies® Industrial UFDs is much lower than that of magnetic
disk drives. In the extremely rare case where a read error does occur, the drive has sophisticated
ECC to recover the data.
These defect and error management systems, coupled with the solid-state construction, give
Cactus Technologies® Industrial UFDs unparalleled reliability.
