ATA Flash Drive

AP-FD18A20CxxxxxS-XXX

3

© 2011 Apacer Technology Inc.

Rev. 1.0

1. General Description

Apacer’s ATA-Flash Drive (AFD) is a high-performance, solid state drive (SSD) designed to replace a

conventional IDE hard disk drive. AFD supports standard ATA/IDE protocol and can be plugged into a ZIF

connector commonly found in portable PCs. It is more rugged, reliable and power-efficient compared to

the mechanical hard drive and is designed for use in rugged laptops, military devices, thin clients, Point of

Sale (POS) terminals, telecom, medical instruments, surveillance systems and industrials PCs. Apacer

AFD Series is the best drop-in replacement for high-maintenance HDD where reliability is a major

concern.

AFD includes a built-in microcontroller and file management firmware that communicates through with the

ATA standard interfaces and is set to the Master operation in default. This means the AFD does not

require any additional or proprietary host software such as the Flash File System (FFS) and Memory

Technology Driver (MTD) software. AFD is designed to work at 3.3 Volts, support the standard ATA/IDE

protocol up to PIO Mode-4, Multiword DMA Mode-2, and Ultra DMA Mode-6 interfaces and uses a

standard ATA driver that fits to all major operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows series, Apple’s

MAC OS family, and UNIX variants.

Featuring technologies as Advanced Wear-leveling algorithms, S.M.A.R.T, Built-In Hardware ECC,

Enhanced Data Integrity, Intelligent Power Failure Recovery, Secure Protection Zone and ATA Secure

Erase, Apacer’s AFD assures users of a versatile device on data storage.

1.1 Performance-Optimized Controller

The heart of an ATA-Flash Drive is the ATA controller, which translates standard ATA signals into the

Flash Media data and controls of the flash media. This proprietary ATA controller is specifically designed

to attain high data throughput from the host to the flash.

1.1.1 Power Management Unit (PMU)

The power management unit (PMU) controls the power consumption of the ATA-Flash Drive. It reduces

the power consumption of the ATA-Flash Drive Controller by putting circuitry not in operation into sleep

mode. The PMU has zero wake-up latency.

1.1.2 SRAM Buffer

The ATA Flash Drive Controller performs as an SRAM buffer to optimize the host’s data transfer to and

from the flash media.