The lowest cost and most advanced FAT file system chipset!

Press Announcements
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The F20 SoC (System on Chip) is now in production and ready to ship. Products can now have full access to files and folders on SD cards with very minimal resources. Priced at around $6, it is a more economical option than investing in building and debugging file system libraries. The F20-uSD board is a low-cost OEM board with the F20 SoC at it’s core, an ideal board for quick integration or evaluation of the F20 SoC.

We are also improving the overall file system offerings. First, the original ALFAT chipset has been renamed as the F40 SoC. Only the product name has changed, the ordering part number is the same, ALF2X-SC-512. Second, we are introducing the GHI Electronics’ File System Command’s Manual, which covers all commands for all of GHI Electronics’ file system products. There are also datasheets that cover the specifics of the individual products.

We are also excited to release a new firmware for the F20 family that adds a few useful features. The new datasheet has more information on what is now supported and an updated pinout. See the developers’ guide for more information on updating the firmware on the F20 SoC and related products. Unfortunately, the new firmware and any future releases are not compatible with the F20-uSDs shipped to date (those that have a GHI bootloader version of 2.0.2). They will still work great with the full-featured existing 0.5.0 version of the firmware.

F20 SoC: https://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/558
F40 (ALFAT) SoC: https://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/512
F20-uSD Board: https://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/546
File System Commands Manual: https://www.ghielectronics.com/downloads/man/File_System_User_Manual.pdf
F20 SoC Datasheet: https://www.ghielectronics.com/downloads/man/F20_Datasheet.pdf
F40 (ALFAT) SoC Datasheet: https://www.ghielectronics.com/downloads/man/F40_Datasheet.pdf

2 Likes
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@ Gary - Does this SoC support wear leveling?

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@ Mr. John Smith - Quality SD cards do their own wear leveling.

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@ godefroi - Yea, but what about non quality. Also, what if I wanted to make a really awesome flash drive with this device, and use eMMC memory. Would it have wear leveling?

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Never fails. The day after I place an order, there’s something new that I would have added on.

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Just read the F40 vs F20 comparison. Seems troubling (to me) that file renaming got left out of the F20. That’s the basis for fast atomic file updates with the pattern : write new file; rename files; delete old file - particularly useful for updating config files with minimum downtime and minimum opportunity for leaving the system in a bad state (e.g., partially written config file).

Any chance that might work its way back in?

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@ Mr. John Smith - There is no build in wear-leveling beyond what the SD card itself may provide.

@ mcalsyn - Resources are very limited on the device so not every command can be added. We will look for any improvements that can be made in resource usage and supported commands in future updates.

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@ Mr. John Smith - Quality eMMC would. I’d be somewhat surprised to find eMMC that doesn’t, specifically because of what eMMC is generally designed to do.

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@ godefroi - Well that’s good to know.