The FlashFX Tera flash manager and Reliance Nitro file system replace Microsoft's native equivalents in Windows CE and Windows Mobile, providing greater reliability and faster performance, the company says.
First announced last year, the products are said to allow smartphones, cameras, PNDs (personal navigation devices), and other products to open files from flash storage up to 100 times faster. In addition, the replacement storage stack provides writes that are six times faster, and random reads/writes that are twice as fast, the company says.
According to Datalight, its newly released 1.2 version of FlashFX Tera now offers out-of-the-box support for more than 300 different flash memory parts. Supporting NAND, NOR, and MLC NAND flash in a single driver, the software extends the life of devices using flash via patented wear-leveling and bad block management, the company says.
The 1.2 upgrade to Reliance Nitro, meanwhile, adds support for extended file attributes, most commonly used to designate file permissions. Datalight notes that as data quantity and complexity in devices grows, extended file attributes can also be used for storing additional metadata, such as digital rights information, GPS location, or any other information that makes finding and using data easier.
Background
According to Datalight, its products replace Windows Mobile's standard data storage stack (below left), which includes the flash media driver (FMD), flash abstraction layer (FAL), and TFAT (transactional FAT) file system. FlashFX Tera (below right) is an "intelligent" flash manager that includes built-in support for more than 300 flash parts, and provides a block-device interface to the high-level applications/file systems. Meanwhile, Reliance Nitro is a high-integrity file system that provides 100 percent reliability against data corruption at a logical level, while offering fast mount speeds and high performance, says Datalight.
Datalight's products (right) replace Microsoft's standard data storage stack (left)
Source: Datalight
(Click either to enlarge)Datalight has claimed that its FlashFX Pro -- a companion product to Flash FX Tera -- is approximately 4.5 times faster than its Microsoft equivalent at sequential writes, 311 percent faster at random writes, 14 percent faster at sequential reads, and 29 percent faster at random reads. Meanwhile, it's said, Reliance Nitro can be from 50 to 700 percent faster than TFAT at creating files, and up to 500 times faster at opening them.
Apart from speed, Datalight's products are claimed to include other features that are important to Windows Mobile design teams, such as block locking, one-time programming, bootloader integration, and power suspend/resume. An included toolkit includes image creation, a NAND simulator, a flash life estimator, and a comprehensive flash file system benchmarking test suite. The use of both static and dynamic wear leveling can double the life of flash media, the company adds.
Datalight CEO Roy Sherrill stated, "With the growth in adoption of data-intensive embedded devices, OEMs need a flash file system that better supports their reliability and performance requirements. We're filling that gap in the market with a robust, commercial-grade solution backed by our reputation for responsive, high-quality support."
AvailabilityDatalight did not release pricing, but said its flash file products for Windows Mobile are available immediately. More information may be found on the company's website,
here.
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