FlashMedia Manager
Developers have many choices to make at the beginning of a project. A critical one is whether to use the media management tools offered by the flash manufacturer, or whether to move to a solution that can deliver more flexibility, better reliability and higher performance.
Datalight's FlashFX® Pro is a flash media manager that delivers all three.
FlashFX® Pro is a high-performance, multi-threaded flash media manager targeted at applications requiring real-time response from resident flash memory.
Many devices - such as cameras, set-top boxes or handheld medical devices - support streaming video or audio applications and information must be read from non-volatile storage without delays. Because of its multi-threaded design, FlashFX Pro is able to offer low read latency for these multimedia applications.
Engineers use FlashFX Pro because of:
- High Reliability
- Fast Time to Market
- Wide-ranging Flash Support
- Unrivaled Flexibility
FlashFX Tera Intelligent Flash Media Manager with Support for MLC
FlashFX Tera is a flash management solution that frees developers from the volatility and constraints of single-source flash memory software. Versatility allows fast integration with over 300 flash chip part numbers. Dynamic chip select provides run-time flexibility of using just one driver image, saving money and lowering supply-line risks during production. Pre-written support includes SLC and MLC NAND and NOR parts from top manufacturers (Intel, Micron, Samsung, Toshiba, Numonyx and Spansion), fusion flash (such as Samsung OneNAND, FlexOneNAND or Spansion OrNAND), and application processor flash controllers (like Freescale MX and Texas Instruments OMAP). Our high performance, multi-threaded flash drivers provide superior wear-leveling, bad block management, garbage collection and fast read/write speeds.
How FlashFX Pro works
Click here to see a Flash presentation.
FlashFX® Pro works by allowing an operating system or application to use flash memory as if it were a small-sector read/write disk similar to a PC floppy or hard disk drive. This provides a generic block device driver interface that can be used with virtually any file system. Neither product includes a file system of its own.
Once loaded into the target system, FlashFX Pro is typically referred to as a "flash disk" because it makes the flash array appear as normal disk storage to the operating system and applications. Because a Resident Flash Array (RFA) is usually soldered into the target system and is non-removable, the flash disk appears to the operating system as a hard disk.
FlashFX Pro Supports Multithreaded Operations
Read operations may interrupt both write and erase operations. This is particularly true for multimedia applications, such as streaming video, because writes and erases (in particular) may take a substantial amount of time on most flash parts. This adversely affects streaming video applications that must deliver a minimal frame-rate for acceptable performance. FlashFX Pro allows one write/erase operation to be executed at any given time, and any number of read operations.
FlashFX Pro Interface and Components
The high-level block diagram below shows the different components of FlashFX Pro and their relationships. The operating system and hardware (flash array) are shown in their respective relationships to the FlashFX Pro drivers.
FlashFX Family Product details:
FlashFX Pro® supports any 32-bit operating system and more than 200 flash parts.
Within the product line, Software Development Kits supporting both NAND and NOR flash are available for the Nucleus, ThreadX, VxWorks Windows CE and Linux operating systems, as well as for DOS (including Datalight ROM-DOS).
An RTOS Porting Kit is available for developers who want to port either product to any other 32-bit operating systems.