Advantages of Industrial Flash Storage for Transportation Industry

Logistics required to transport goods and people around the globe is generally taken for granted by people outside this industry. When a person or cargo can arrive within 48 hours to almost anywhere on the planet, some sophisticated systems are performing behind the scenes.

There are many different methods of transport including Container Ship, Railway, Planes and Trucks. Each method has its own specific concerns, but there are several concerns shared by all.

Safety of the transport vehicle itself and personnel as well as the safety of the cargo or passengers as the case may be.

Security of the vehicle, cargo and passengers and understanding logistically where the vehicle and cargo are at any given point in time. Also understanding if weather or other delays will affect the scheduled arrival time is key.

Scheduling periodic vehicle, plane or ship maintenance is a much better solution than unplanned breakdowns while in service. This is obvious when considering an aircraft, but also a concern when land vehicle has perishable cargo which needs to arrive to market by a given time.

Most aircraft and trains have significant amounts of electronics focused on ensuring security, safety and arrival time. Increasingly, ships and trucks are adding these features. Additionally, black boxes which record multiple data points, are installed in many vehicles to determine cause in case of accident.

To accomplish many of these tasks, sensors are needed to provide system input. Collecting GPS, altitude, temperature, instrument settings, and audio/video data to name a few.

In some instances data needs to be saved locally to a primary or backup storage medium. When needed, this function is successfully achieved with data storage flash due its high shock and vibration rating, low power usage, reliability and tolerance to temperature extremes.

Considerations to make when determining the type of memory to use in these applications should be:

  • How critical is the application?
  • What is the cost of failure?
  • How reliable of a memory device is needed?
  • Consumer, Commercial or Industrial Grade?

For consumer applications, a low cost card purchased online or at a retail store may suffice. But for a locomotive or avionics application, a significantly more reliable part is required.

This is why Industrial Grade Flash Storage exists. High endurance memory coupled with an Industrial controller and high reliability firmware algorithms make for a robust memory solution.

Several Key specifications which showcase the Industrial Advantage are:

  • Over 2 Million Write Cycles per logical block
  • Ability to operate for decades in -45C to 90C temperatures
  • Locked BOM and Long Life Cycles

This has been a brief overview of the Industrial Grade products. For more in depth information, see, Why Industrial Grade? and Industrial Grade vs Industrial MLC.

Cactus Technologies offers the most reliable Industrial Grade products on the market. If you have an application and are uncertain what the right memory solution should be, contact us and we’ll be happy to assist.

Steve Larrivee has over 30 year's experience in the data storage market, including 5 years at Seagate Technology and 10 years at SanDisk. He joined Cactus Technologies Limited as an equity partner and Co-Founded Cactus USA in 2007 with partner Tom Aguillon. Learn more about Steve on LinkedIn.