Future Technology
ECC Tek has invented and patented methods and apparatus for encoding and decoding Reed-Solomon codes in a parallel and pipelined fashion. We see the potential to use this technology to create fault-tolerant hard disk drives (Parallel Reed-Solomon HDDs) and fault-tolerant solid state disks (Parallel Reed-Solomon SSDs). Click here to view U.S. Patent 5,754,563.
Designing Ultra-High-Performance RAID Storage Systems
The following article describes at a high level a powerful way of designing ultra‑high‑performance RAID storage systems so that future RAID systems will be able to use fairly unreliable memory elements such as MLC NAND Flash chips with no loss of performance or data when numerous cells and chips fail: Designing Ultra-High-Performance RAID Storage Systems.
Parallel Reed-Solomon NAND Flash Solid State Disks (PRS SSDs)
High cost and wear-out characteristics of NAND Flash chips have limited sales of NAND Flash Solid State Disks. ECC Tek’s two dimensional Reed-Solomon error-correction system solves these problems.
PRS SSDs should be developed into commercial products for the following reasons:
- PRS SSDs will solve the wear-out problem associated with NAND Flash chips by allowing blocks and chips to fail without the loss of data or performance. Failed blocks can simply be removed (mapped out) and replaced with new ones. PRS SSDs can be designed so that failed chips can also be removed and replaced resulting in an indefinite SSD lifetime.
- PRS SSDs could significantly increase revenues and profits at NAND Flash chip manufacturing companies since a higher percentage of manufactured chips could be used in PRS SSDs because of the increased power of the parallel error-correction coding (ECC) system.
- PRS SSDs will have automatic, built-in backup.
To read the entire document, go to PRS SSDs.
Parallel Reed-Solomon Hard Disk Drives (PRS HDDs)
ECC Tek proposes that some HDD Company develop a new class of disk storage products called parallel Reed-Solomon Hard Disk Drives (PRS HDDs). PRS HDDs would have much higher transfer rates than conventional HDDs and a variable level of automatic, built-in backup. PRS HDDs would contain a number of Head-Disk Assemblies (HDAs) and a custom controller chip as components.
All of the HDAs in a PRS HDD would be written and read simultaneously. The disks within all of the HDAs would be synchronized so that a PRS HDD would appear to be a conventional HDD but with higher performance and automatic, built-in backup which is impossible in a conventional HDD.
To summarize, ECC Tek believes PRS HDDs should be developed into commercial products for the following reasons:
- PRS HDDs could significantly increase revenues and profits at some HDD Company because fewer types of components would need to be manufactured, fewer employees would be needed, and a higher percentage of manufactured media could be used in PRS HDD products than can be used in conventional HDDs because of the increased power of the ECC system used in PRS HDDs
- PRS HDDs would have automatic, built-in backup eliminating the expense, nuisance and need for RAID controller boards, extra drives and backup software.
- PRS HDDs would have much higher transfer rates and a much higher overall performance than conventional HDDs.
- PRS HDDs which use tiny HDAs as components would have higher performance, consume less space and less power than equivalent capacity conventional HDDs.
- PRS HDDs would enable some HDD Company to make many unique types of PRS HDD models while only manufacturing a few types of HDAs increasing economies of scale and driving down the cost of HDAs.
- PRS HDDs would allow the use of media that is unusable in conventional HDDs because the PRS HDD ECC system operates on a two dimensional array of data instead of a one dimensional array as is done in conventional HDDs.
- PRS HDDs have features that are highly desirable and commercially valuable but impossible with conventional HDDs.
- PRS HDDs have more commercial value than conventional HDDs and therefore they can be priced higher and offer more profit potential than conventional HDDs.
To read the entire document, go to PRS HDDs.