Use cases | Yaffs - A Flash File System for embedded use

Inner Space

Outside the Earth's atmosphere lie many kinds of radiation, some harmful to humans and some harmful to Silicon chips. Chips used in space have to treated carefully lest Cosmic Rays alter the states of the atoms in the chips. In digital electronics very small errors can have very grave consequences, so reliable storage of data is especially important.

Our Yaffs Flash File System has been devised specifically to handle stored data that is vulnerable. It is mainly used with NAND chips, which leave the manufacturer with known inherent faults, described on each chip as it is made and tested. Yaffs reliably deals with the known imperfections, and then it also deals with those that occur in exposure to space conditions as time passes.

Our customers appreciate the extreme reliability of Yaffs, and since 2016 more and more of the buyers have used them in Aerospace operations. Notable among these is the Terrestrial Extra-Solar Survey Satellite, featured on the home page of www.yaffs.net. There NASA accumulates detailed data on board the satellite so that when its terrestrial base is closest it can spit out a fast stream of data collected in its latest orbit.

Back on Earth, Yaffs is used in a multitude of areas ranging from office copiers to point-of-sale equipment in shops and heavy equipment that might manage lifts or cranes.

If you need the most robust digital data storage possible, then talk to us!

“Almost 15 years …never seen a failure...”

The DDS range of digital data storage solutions from Tape Replacement Ltd deliver a modern, solid state data storage unit designed specifically to replace out-dated magnetic tape, magneto optical, disc hard-drive units such as those used within legacy telephone switching systems. This saves companies such as telcos, and ultimately their customers, millions of dollars in upgrade costs as well as improving overall system reliability and keeping functioning equipment from being dumped in landfills.

The storage layer is made up of two independent stacks of NAND chips, combined using a RAID-1 structure, using YAFFS to expose this to the application.

According to Andre Renaud, Engineering Manager at Tape Replacement:

“We've been running the units for almost 15 years now, and we have never seen a failure of the underlying YAFFS/NAND storage system. YAFFS provides us with a fast, reliable storage mechanism which is especially useful given the changes in NAND technologies over the years, and the intricate technical details of their behaviour.”

Tape Replacement Ltd

http://www.tape-replacement.com/

Yaffs in space!

NASA TESS Mission This Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky.

It is a project regularly using our Yaffs File System to store incoming data and preserve it, in the rigours of the space environment, before sending it back to Earth.

In a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, TESS will monitor more than 200,000 stars for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. This first-ever spaceborne all-sky transit survey will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. No ground-based survey can achieve this feat.

What TESS does is described at:- https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/tess/objectives.html

Some File Systems are not robust enough to be suitable for such exacting work.

Yaffs in action

Android phones were early adopters of Yaffs, providing a huge international test-bed, increasing exposure and confidence in the robustness of Yaffs. In turn, this attracted many customers who particularly value robustness, and now Yaffs is used in many high-reliability areas such as aerospace and critical infrastructure.

It wouldn't be surprising if Yaffs hadn't already been part of your day today...

Making a cup of coffee? Yaffs is used in the process controllers that pump and refine the water and the electricity or gas used to heat the water.

Using the internet? Many of the routers and other equipment use Yaffs. If they stopped working you'd probably not be reading this page.

Used a phone? Well some phones use Yaffs. Yaffs is also used in cell towers, telephone exchanges, video phones, video codecs,... Without Yaffs you wouldn't even get a dial tone.

Flying somewhere? Yaffs is used in planes: both pilot information systems and cabin systems. It is also used in point of sale equipment and public information systems (eg. passenger information systems).

Watching a movie on TV? Well first off, Yaffs is used in the movie production equipment (cameras and monitors) as well as synthesizers and digital musical instruments used to make the soundtrack. Yaffs is used in TV broadcast equipment and set top boxes that get the movie to your TV, then lastly, Yaffs is used in some TVs or sound systems.

Driving on a road? Lots of data was needed to build that road and Yaffs gets involved all the way. Yaffs is used in the GPSs, laser scanners and total stations (modern day theodolites) used to gather the data. This data then goes back to the office for design, then gets sent back out to automated Yaffs-powered construction equipment (laser and GPS guided graders, pavers etc) to make accurately built roads which are safer and last longer.

It's used in keeping you safe: in building security and in building monitoring; in food security and safety systems; and, in the provision of the emergency services. People and companies trust Yaffs to be reliable.