Hyperstone flash memory card or solid state disk (SSD) controller together with included firmware provide considerable mechanisms when handling a complex medium - making flash memory easy to use for consumer applications and reliable for industrial applications. Furthermore, firmware that is stored in the flash itself offers several possibilities for custom features, even when based on identical hardware.

Solid State Disk (SSD) can be considered a substitute for hard disk drives because NAND Flash has significant advantages over hard disk drives: 

• Performance:
  Latency times basically due to the inherent mechanical operations of HDD are not necessary for SSD and seek times or access times are about 30 times faster. Sustained writing using interleaving can be scaled to some extend by both HDD and SSD. However, again due to the mechanical issues, this is more difficult for HDDs. Finally the HDD has a slight advantage at sustained reading. Performance in real life scenarios also depends on the level of fragmentation of the data when using HDDs. Have you used your defrag tool lately? Or have you ever performed this for a 500 GB drive? With SSDs, defragmentation is an inherent feature of the logical to physical translation and wear-leveling.
 
• Cost:
  HDD is cost competitive for large capacity in terms of GB/$ but not for small capacity drives. If your application doesn't need terra bytes, other advantageous outweigh cost.
 
• Power consumption:
  * Power Idle: HDD 0.8 - 5.0 W; SSD: 0.035 - 3.0 W 
  * Power Read/Write: HDD: 5.0 - 10.0 W; SSD: 0.325 - 5.0 W 
 
• Reliability:
  Again due to the mechanics HDD most significant disadvantage is its reliability and sensitivity due to shock
 
• Scalability of Form Factors:
  Solid State Storage can be implemented in many different form factors from microSD or eMMC to 3.5" drives.
 
• Choosing the optimal Host Interfaces:
  Solid State Storage can be based on several host interfaces including but not limited to SD, MMC, USB, S-ATA, P-ATA/IDE, CF, while HDDs are mainly driven by the PC market using mainly S-ATA today.

The A2 SSD Controller is specifically designed for applications such as:

• High reliability & industrial Solid State Disks (SSD) including 2.5" and 1.8" SSD, MO-297, MO-300

• SATA Disk-on-Modules (DoM)

• Embedded Flash Multi-Chip-Modules (MCM)

• Multi-Chip-Package (MCP)

• Disk-on-Board

The F3 Flash Memory Controller is specifically designed for applications such as high-speed CF cards, disk-on-module, or solid state disks. it supports automatic sensing of PCMCIA or True-IDE host interface mode. Compliant to PCMCIA 2.1, PC Card Advance Technology Attachment (ATA), and CF 3.0/4.0, memory mapped or I/O operations, fast ATA host-to-buffer transfer rates, programmed input/output (PIO) mode 6, MDMA mode 4, and ultraDMA mode 5 in true-Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) mode. While offering parallel-ATA (PATA), serial-ATA (SATA) can also be realized using an additional PATA to SATA bridge chip.
The firmware, stored in flash memory, is application and host interface specific. All tasks with respect to flash and data management and data transfers between flash and host are
implemented either in hardware or in software. Hyperstone flash controllers boot-up using firmware that is stored within the flash memory of the product.
Other solutions might store firmware in the ROM of the controller. Therefore, based on identical product hardware, manufacturers are able to provide different products or feature sets. Also,
firmware could be updated in the field or immediately before delivery. The firmware is copied into the flash in a so called pre-formatting process after the storage product has been assembled.
Several algorithms and concepts are used to address the questions initially posed re-writing to areas, maximizing flash life time, and ensuring data transfer integrity.