Small Form Factor Storage

Historically SSD’s were designed with the same dimensions and packaging as the hard drives they were replacing. Today, however, SSD’s can break away from traditional form factors and take full advantage of the flexibility that solid state technology affords.  

Viking Technology Solid State Drives (SSDs) now offer low and medium density storage in significantly smaller form factors enabling much smaller “purpose built” storage solutions. As a result, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) can think outside the HDD box when designing next-generation solutions. And it’s not just that SSDs offer smaller form factors. They also can provide performance that is an order of magnitude better than HDDs, weigh less, consume less power and generate significantly less heat when in use. For markets such as industrial embedded, enterprise server and storage, networking/communications and defense and aerospace, the advantages that smaller form factor-SSDs deliver are highly compelling to the system architect.

The popular “legacy” HDD form factors are:
•  1.8” (which is actually 2.1” wide)
•  2.5” (which is actually 2.7” wide)

Newer form factors can shed the traditional plastic or metal cases and be incorporated into the system as bare board drives that are either reside in sockets or are soldered directly to the printed circuit board.  Examples include:   

•  SSD’s mounted in the memory sockets of the computer (SATADIMM)
•  Board mounted SSD’s hard soldered to the computer motherboard
•  MO-297 (a.k.a. SlimSATA, a 2” x .5” bare board SSD with a socket)
•  PCIe SSD (SSD mounted on the PCI Express computer bus in the computer)
•  MO-300 (mSATA) mini-SATA SSD measures 50.80mm x 29.85mm x 4.85mm
 

For additional information, contact ssd@vikingtechnology.com