Datalight Long-Term Partnership with Leading Automotive
Tier 1 Supplier Creates a Differentiated Driving Experience
The leader in automotive infotainment systems is working to make driving safer, cleaner, more economical, and more enjoyable for drivers around the world. Information plays
an increasingly important role for drivers, and the reduction of fuel consumption and
emissions are integral to these systems. Services like navigation, telematics, driver assistance and entertainment are evolving into fully networked systems. Automotive engineers work to make the interaction between vehicle and driver as seamless as possible.
The Challenge
In 2006, one of their in-vehicle navigation systems began
showing signs of corruption on NOR flash. Datalight engineers helped them implement FlashFX® Pro intelligent
flash management software, and then used the FlashFX
Pro toolset to pinpoint bit errors in the flash itself.
Later, as they continued to innovate with devices like networked car multimedia systems, navigation and telematics systems, heads-up displays, and terminal systems for
use in commercial vehicles, Datalight software engineers
worked side-by-side with them to enhance the software
for their specific use cases.
For example, though NOR flash specifications typically do not call for ECCs, the
using Datalight software
extreme power environment of automobiles required additional robustness. Dahave been shipped by this
talight enhanced FlashFX Pro to respond
one market-leading Tier 1
to the conditions they encountered. Datalight also created a new feature called
“QuickMount” (now standard in FlashFX
Tera) to help satisfy the boot speed requirements for
their platform.
Over 9.5 million vehicles
FlashFX products allow them to select virtually any flash
Photo used for illustrative purpose only and may not reflect actual
customer product
part based on price, availability, and project requirements, without having the delay and expense of retooling software, and end users
benefit from the reliability of Datalight file systems in harsh automotive environments
where inconsistent power is a constant challenge.
Recently, the company again selected Datalight for a robust, high-performance storage
stack on their newest automotive platform. After years of integrating them across a
wide range of embedded systems, company designers know the value and flexibility
offered by Datalight products.
Why They Keep Coming Back to Datalight
This global automotive systems supplier came to Datalight for superior data storage
software, but our responsiveness and expertise keeps them coming back. Whenever
they’ve encountered problems with data storage, Datalight engineers have worked tirelessly to help them. Datalight software and support is an integral part of their strategy
1 | PROJECT PROFILE
to provide innovative, high quality products customers can rely on for the life of their
vehicle. Our knowledgeable and committed support staff helps them get products to
market faster and reduce development costs.
Root Cause Analysis: The Quest for Zero Defects
Today automotive OEMs—and by extension, their suppliers—are being held to a
standard that demands absolute answers whenever a component or system fails. The
safeguards built in and care taken in developing these systems is high and failures
are a rare occurrence, only small fractions of a percentage. However, when the cost
of failure is measured in human lives, you need to make sure you know the cause to
prevent it from ever happening again. In complex environments like these where an
intermittent power variation or one-time bit flip can wreak havoc, such definitive
diagnosis can be time-consuming if not impossible to track down. Datalight’s
long term partnership with leaders in a diversity
About Datalight
of demanding environments, have allowed us to
Datalight products deliver proven reliability
developed expertise, features and tools that help isolate
for over 300 million devices in demanding
and explain anomalies.
Recently, a Tier 1 automotive supplier asked us to help
them with root-cause analysis on number of IVI units
with apparently random failures. Their hardware
component suppliers had examined the returned units
and reported that they were performing to spec. Most
software suppliers will simple shrug when confronted
with a non-reproducible failure such as these. Our
data storage experts dug in and were able to analyze
the software details of these systems and categorize
the seemingly random issues into groups that point
to things like data bus timing conflicts or isolate the
specific cell of flash that failed so that further hardware
design investigation could be done. Furthermore, we
made the custom tools that we developed to aid this
investigation available to our customer so they can
continue to examine any new units that might exhibit
unexplained failures in the future, saving them time,
money and frustration.
product categories like automotive, medical,
retail, industrial automation and military/
aerospace. For data integrity, device lifespan,
and design flexibility, leading manufacturers
invest in solutions from Datalight.
• Leaders in IVI and fleet management gain
fast boot time
• Four of top 5 ruggedized handhelds gain
data integrity across their product lines
• Worldwide leader in automation keeps
HMI devices reliable for 3 generations
• Innovative smart grid platform gains
years of product lifespan
Our product line includes:
• Reliance Edge, a tiny file system for
decision-quality, real-time data
• Reliance
Nitro,
second
generation
transactional power failsafe file system
• FlashFXe,
software
acceleration
for
eMMC/SD storage
• FlashFX Tera, comprehensive software
management for NOR/NAND flash
For more information, visit
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Datalight, Inc.
22118 20th Avenue SE, Suite 135
Bothell, WA 98021 USA
1-800-221-6630
www.Datalight.com
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Datalight, the Datalight Logo, FlashFX, FlashFX Pro, FlashFX Tera, FlashFXe, Reliance, Reliance Nitro, Reliance Edge, ROM-DOS, and Sockets are trademarks or registered trademarks of Datalight,
Inc. All other product names are trademarks of their respective holders. Specification and price
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