Cactus Industrial Grade CF Vastly Exceeds Specs in Long Term Endurance Test

Cactus Technologies, Ltd., ongoing Long Term Endurance Testing of our 303 Series 1GB Industrial Grade CF, based on 43nm SLC NAND, demonstrates greater than 2X the estimated number of write/erase cycles (aka TBW – TeraBytes Written).

The 806 Series Industrial SD Cards and 100 Series Industrial USB Flash Drives use the same 43nm SLC NAND flash memory and are anticipated to have similar results.

As a primer on TBW, it is calculated by the following equation:

Raw NAND Endurance x Device Capacity / WAF (Write Amplification Factor)

The greater the NAND Endurance and Drive Capacity, the larger the TBW number.

The relatively low capacity Cactus 1GB CompactFlash was estimated at 70 TBW. It has now surpassed 171 TBW. This is an actual number, not a calculation, which took 359 days of constant writing as fast as the CF card could operate. The card continues to operate without errors today.

Joseph Chang, Cactus Tech’s VP Engineering, explained, “We find the 43nm SLC NAND is the most reliable available in the market today and, for this reason, it is used in several of our Industrial Grade products.”

To add some perspective to the 171 TBW for the Cactus 1GB CF card, one major SATA SSD manufacturer rates their 256GB SSD at only 72 TBW and another at 150 TBW. This is due to the lower cost MLC and TLC memory, based on 1x nm technology used in these products. If you extrapolated the 1GB Cactus CF capacity to 256GB it would have a TBW of 43,776 for comparison.

Steve Larrivee, Cactus VP Sales & Mktg, added, “If your interest is in a high reliability flash storage device for an Industrial or long life application, the data is clear - Industrial Grade products based on 43nm SLC NAND offer the most reliability.”