Looking for a reason to try new hardware? Experience the benefits of SSDs

Like you, we are constantly adapting our hardware and technology to keep at the forefront of our industry. When new boards and systems are launched we are first to identify if it has any positive benefit in our product range. This is true also for our range of peripherals.

Up until recently, solid state storage has always been an expensive technology reserved only for high end specialist enterprise applications. More recently however, there has been a rise in the adoption of Solid State Drives in the consumer computing industry. This sudden growth in demand for Solid State Drives has moved manufacturers to produce a cost effective alternative to traditional hard drives.

What are Solid State Drives?

Unlike traditional mechanical hard drives, which are made up of a series of magnetic platters, motors and reading arms, Solid State Drives contain flash memory. Flash memory is found in a wide range of every day products including smart phones, digital cameras and USB memory sticks.

What are the benefits of Solid State Drives?

When we first looked into solid state storage technology, we quickly identified the advantage it can bring to the industrial computing market. As explained by our Technical Manager, Chris Durose, the physical properties of Solid State Drives are very desirable in our industry.

“Solid State Drives offer a number of advantages over traditional magnetic hard drives. The main benefit being that Solid State Drives have no moving parts. With no moving parts, Solid State Drives are not affected by jolts, drops and vibrations.

In addition, Solid State Drives are not affected by magnetic fields and produce very little heat. These kinds of features are desirable in the industrial market where electromagnetic interference and high environmental temperatures are common.”

Thanks to not having to rely on power hungry motors, Solid State Drives consume over 20% less energy than its mechanical counterpart and produce no sound. With no mechanical parts to fail, many of the Solid State Drive manufacturers have published MTBF figures that double that of mechanical hard drives.

In addition to its physical properties, Solid State Drives also bring a number of performance advantages. For example, operating system boot up time is approximately 1.5 times faster compared to mechanical drives. Software has been noted to load within seconds and reading and writing data can reach speeds of up to 500MB/s.

With so many benefits, as well as a lower overall total cost of ownership, it is no wonder why we are taking full advantage of Solid State Drives as a rugged and reliable alternative to mechanical hard drives.

If you would like to trial a Solid State Drive in your next embedded system or would like to know more about solid state technology, then contact our technical account team on +44 (0)1782 337 800 or email sales@impulse-corp.co.uk.

Related links
Alternative high performance storage solutions available at Impulse

Discover our system integration facility

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Did you know that Impulse has a system integration facility based in Stoke-on-Trent? Our engineers take full advantage of the state-of-the-art facility when designing, building and customising industrial computer systems for our customers.

Many of our customers take advantage of our flexible build and delivery scheduling service. They rely on Impulse to ensure they receive the right hardware at the right time. With our build and delivery scheduling service we can ensure we have sufficient hardware in stock ready for testing, building and dispatching, on time and on budget.

Why do customers choose us for their industrial computing needs? Here are five reasons why:

1. Purpose built production facility based in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire
2. Experienced team of highly qualified engineers
3. Flexible system build and delivery scheduling service
4. Strict quality assurance and revision control policies
5. Custom Windows Embedded OS design service

Click here to find out more about our system integration facility

For more information about our system integration facility and how it can benefit you, contact our technical account team on +44 (0)1782 337 800 or alternatively email sales@impuse-corp.co.uk.

The ARK-1120 – high performance yet compact embedded system

The ARK-1120 from Advantech

This week we launched our latest embedded PC, the ARK-1120 by Advantech. The ARK-1120 is an ultra compact embedded system powered by the popular Intel Atom N455 and includes the Intel ICH8-M chipset providing a powerful combination features and performance.

The first thing we noticed about the ARK-1120 was how small and light it was. The ARK-1120 measures in at just W133mm x H43mm x D94mm and weighs only 0.7kg. The chassis is constructed out of a rugged yet lightweight aluminium alloy featuring a series of solid fins designed to help disperse heat generated by the processor and board components. The ‘fin’ design gives the benefits of a true fan-less system without the need to rely on noisy and unreliable chassis fans. The chassis features VESA mounting holes on the underside allowing you to mount it on the back of a monitor or on a wall via a mating VESA bracket.

Although the ARK-1120 is very compact it still includes an impressive range of I/O features. As standard it has four USB2.0 ports and two RS-232 serial ports. Inside the system it features a SATA port, a CompactFlash Type I/II socket and a half size Mini PCIe socket. The Mini PCIe socket is quite a useful feature to have as it allows you to expand the system’s capabilities by including a WiFi or HSDPA/3G modem card.

The Intel Atom N455 processor is part of the embedded CPU range from Intel. Integrated into the processor for better reliability is a GPU and memory controller. The GPU is based on the Intel GMA3150 and performs at a 200MHz clock speed ensuring fast graphic performance. It features DirectX 9c and OpenGL 1.5 support and is capable of hardware accelerated MPEG-2 video playback. The integrated memory controller supports up to 2GB of DDR3 SODIMM memory and up to 384MB of this memory can be shared with the GPU through Dynamic Video Memory Technology (DVMT). In total the Atom N455 consumes only 6.5W making it an ideal solution for high performance yet low power embedded systems.

You can view the press release here. A full specification list and datasheet can be found on the product page. For more information on the ARK-1120 you can get in contact with us on +44 (0)1782 337 800 or alternatively email sales@impulse-corp.co.uk.