Cactus Technologies, Limited
1.1. Supported Standards
Cactus Technologies
®
CFast card is fully compatible with the following specification:
•
ATA 7 Specification published by ANSI: X3.221 AT Attachment Interface for Disk
Drives
•
Serial ATA 2.6 Specification published by the Serial ATA International Organization
•
CFast 1.1 Specification published by CFA
1.2. Product Features
Cactus Technologies
®
Industrial CFast card contains a high level, intelligent controller. This
intelligent controller provides many capabilities including the following:
•
Standard ATA register and command set (same as found on most magnetic disk
drives).
•
Manages details of erasing and programming 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 CFast card appears as a standard SATA disk drive to the
host system. The drive utilizes a 512-byte sector which is the same as that in an IDE
magnetic disk drive. To write or read a sector (or multiple sectors), the host computer
software simply issues an ATA Read or Write command to the drive as per the SATA
protocol. The host software then waits for the command 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 CFast products today will
continue to work with future Cactus Technologies
®
Industrial CFast cards built with new flash
technology without having to update or change host software.
1.2.2.
Defect and Error Management
Cactus Technologies
®
Industrial CFast card 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 CFast card 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.
Cactus Technologies Limited
Industrial Grade CFast Card Product Manual
v1.1
5