Clearly, flash memory has significantly replaced various historic storage media. As examples, some 5 years back people were using film in non-digital cameras, computers were offering floppy disk drives, portable CD players played your favorite tunes, and mobile phones were incapable of taking pictures, browsing the web or synchronizing with a PC. In recent years, consumers have become accustomed to using a large variety of NAND flash memory devices for data storage applications. Users of mobile phones, digital cameras, and other gadgets are familiar with the terms SD card, USB-stick, CF cards and the like. Such kinds of small and handy memory systems have become everyday commodities among consumers.

Requirements for such consumer applications are normally determined by

• Cost
• Compatibility to a plethora of host devices
• Fast transfer rates for reading and writing of data
• Storage capacity
• Conformity to standards
• Ease of use

Memory cards or USB sticks that fulfill these requirements can meanwhile be found in almost any supermarket or grocery store around the world. As the above features are not too difficult to obtain, it has become a challenge to list the variety of vendors who manufacture or sell such memory systems.
Have you ever experienced the sharp sound of your hard disk when it crashes? If so, you may specifically like the features of a solid state disk (SSD). Flash based solutions offer many advantages such as being faster, more power efficient, more rugged than rotating media, and being more easily integrated together with other chips in system design and production flows.
Tremendous technology advances have decreased manufacturing costs and reduced prices significantly. These advances however are more and more demanding for very intelligent control functions.

Requirements for highly reliable flash memory storage systems, especially those not removable, such as SSD or embedded Flash or eMMC, are more demanding than for removable consumer
grade cards:

• Good mechanism to detect and correct errors inherent to flash memories
• Efficient algorithms to maximize lifetime
• Tools to predict lifetime or monitor systems' status and health
• Ability to implement customer-specific features

The complex nature of flash cells and their organization demands reliable, high performance control functionality. Flash Controllers of all kinds consist of an interface to the flash memory, a
processor and a host interface.
Hyperstone's controllers are based on a 32-Bit RISCi CPUii together with dedicated hardware blocks, including an error correcting code (ECC) unit, buffers, flash and host interface control logic.

Hyperstone's controllers are among the most powerful single-chip controllers on the market for designing Flash Memory Cards. The required external component count is reduced to a bare minimum of few passive components enabling the design of very low-cost but high-performance flash memory cards.