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• Small Physical Size (or Form Factor): Flash storage devices are designed to be easily
transported. Convenience is an important criterion, especially for consumer and
corporate applications.
• High Data Reliability: Flash memory is very reliable and many of the flash storage
device types also include Error Correction Code (ECC) checking to detect single-
bit errors. For example, Kingston’s CompactFlash
®
cards have a rated error
specification of less than one (1) bit in 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits read (1 bit per
1015 bits read).
• Kingston Flash Data Retention: Kingston flash storage devices are rated for up to
10 years under normal use. Important information should also be backed up on
other media for long-term safekeeping.
• Wear-Leveling Technology: Kingston flash storage devices (excluding SmartMedia
cards) incorporate controllers utilizing advanced wear-leveling technology, which
distributes write cycles across the flash card. Wear-leveling thus extends the useful
life of a flash memory card (for details, please see Kingston Flash Cell Endurance
section, next).
• Flash Cell Endurance: Up to 10,000 Multi- Level Cell (MLC) Flash or up to 100,000
Single-Level Cell (SLC Flash) write cycles per physical sector.
According to Toshiba, the inventor of flash memory: “the 10,000 cycles of MLC
NAND is more than sufficient for a wide range of consumer applications, from
storing documents to digital photos. For example, if a 256MB MLC NAND Flash-
based card can typically store 250 pictures from a 4-megapixel camera (a
conservative estimate), its 10,000 write/erase cycles, combined with wear-leveling
algorithms in the controller, will enable the user to store and/or view
approximately 2.5 million pictures within the expected useful life of the card.”
1
For USB flash drives, Toshiba calculated that a 10,000 write cycle endurance
would enable customers to “completely write and erase the entire contents once
per day for 27 years, well beyond the life of the hardware.”
SLC flash based products, typically found in Kingston’s Elite Pro
™
cards and
DataTraveler 2.0 USB flash drives, offer both high-performance and high-
endurance.
• Automatic Bad Sector Remapping: Kingston flash controllers automatically lock out
sections with bad memory cells (“bad blocks”) and move the data to other sections
(“spare blocks”) to avoid data corruption. During factory formatting (as described
in Section 2), spare blocks are set aside on the flash storage device for remapping
bad sectors over time.
COMMITTED TO MEMORY
Kingston’s engineers
test and select high-
performance
controllers to ensure
that Kingston’s flash
cards are among the
performance leaders
in the industry.
FLASH MEMORY KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY 4
kingston.com/flash
1* Toshiba press release, “Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. Releases
Performance Research on MLC NAND Flash Memory for Consumer Applications,”
May 10, 2004