GHI Electronics has been a world leader in hardware-file-system solutions since 2003, offering the first commercial file system chipset. Ten years into the future and ALFAT was announced in 2013, to be the most powerful and complete offer. Today, we are announcing the release of ALFAT 2. This new major release for ALFAT maintains 100% backwards compatibility with ALFAT 1 making the upgrade an easy choice for current ALFAT customers. In other words, ALFAT 1 and 2 are identical when it comes to the hardware. All the changes made were software improvements and additions. Also, developers can upgrade or downgrade any ALFAT chip at any time using its built in boot loader.
All new SD-Reader Mode
In addition to the numerous small updates and improvements, ALFAT 2 includes an SD-Reader Mode. This mode allows ALFAT to present itself as an SD reader over a USB connection. This mode is ideal for data-logging applications. Any product hosting ALFAT 2 will be able to write data to SD cards (and USB sticks), just like in ALFAT 1, but one of the USB channels is now a USB client with a standard Mass Storage Class. Once that same product is connected to a PC, a user can access the files recorded earlier on the SD card. Please see the block diagram image for more details.
Try it today
Public beta testing for ALFAT is available today. If using the default mode, no hardware changes are needed. If testing the new SD-Reader Mode, we recommend using our ALFAT SDR board. If you are new to the ALFAT family of products we recommend you try our ALFAT Evaluation Kit. Both new products will become available mid-Q2 2014. We look forward to seeing your feedback.
Road Map
ALFAT 1 will be discontinued and replaced with ALFAT 2, which is 100% backwards compatible. It is also possible to downgrade the firmware to version 1 once we start shipping the chipsets with firmware version 2. The beta testing stage is expected to be completed by mid-2014.
ALFAT 2 : http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/512
ALFAT SDR Board : http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/523
ALFAT Evaluation Kit : http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/524