The tiniest file system solution known to man!

Press Announcements
1

Ok, so we fudged the title but it got your attention and now that we have your attention we want to take a minute and talk about our latest file system solution, the F20 System on Chip (SoC) and F20-uSD OEM module. The F20 System on Chip (SoC) is a small, low-cost and low-power file system solution that provides access to files and folders on an SD card using simple serial commands (did we mention that it was really cheap at $4.80 in volume!). The F20-uSD module is an OEM module designed for taking the F20 SoC out for a test drive.

The F20 SoC (AKA ReallyTinyFAT) is the younger, smaller brother of the ALFAT System on Chip. The F20 SoC does not require an external crystal instead an internal clock is used. The commands supported are a subset of the commands supported by the ALFAT SoC, for more information including a comparsion table please take a look at the F20 Developers’ Guide. The F20 SoC is currently not available as we are using the the F20-uSD OEM module to launch the F20 family of products.

F20 SoC: https://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/558
F20-uSD Module: https://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/546
F20 Developers’ Guide: https://www.ghielectronics.com/docs/343/f20-developers-guide

5 Likes
2

Does that mean that something bad is going to happen to ALFAT?..

3

It could mean that or it could mean that we are offering a really cheap file system solution. ;D

4

To be clear, nothing will change for alfat. These two products complement each other.

5

@ Gus - wheeewwww, cool then.

6

so there are more based on the F20 :slight_smile: ?

7

@ Rajesh - once it is 100% in few weeks, it is very easy to make other boards, by us or anyone. It is so simple, you do not even need a crystal!

We have SD and arduino shield as some of the possibilities but no final decisions yet. What are you after?

8

This should go well with my cerb40II based telemetry logger for my model rockets…whenever I get back to the US and get all my rocketry stuff out of storage.

2 Likes
9

Arduino shield
Gadgeteer module
Click board

10

Can you expand on the table in the F20 developers guide to help explain the relative pros and cons of the new F20 uSD solution vs ALFAT SD vs ALFAT USB vs the built in .NET MF file system? I’m particularly interested in power consumption and reliability issues like protecting against what appears to be a problem with any FAT based system where the media can get corrupted if power is removed during a write operation.

11

NETMF offers are very different. They are not specifically made for file system but they are programmable. We can’t really compare apples to oranges.

The file system chips we offer handle files better and have a quick flush mode designed for power loss. They also offload all tasks from your main processor. Plus they are very economical.

12

Am I reading too much between the lines and I’m really comparing caviar (ALFAT) and Cheerios (.NET MF) or is it really apples and oranges (ALFAT roughly equal to .NET MF)?

13

Will the price change? Will it increase?

I am asking this to decide how much volume should I order.

14

We rarely change prices on these products