What is Production State Awareness?
Production State Awareness (PSA) is a feature available for eMMC 5.0 devices and higher. PSA defines a safe pre-load area that supports pre-programming eMMC Flash devices in Single Level Cell (SLC) mode.
There are three types of flash memory:
- Single-level cell (SLC) NAND has one bit per cell ('1' or '0') state
- Multi-level cell (MLC) NAND stores two bits per cell ('1' '1'; '1' '0'; '0' '0' or '0' '1' per cell)
- Triple-level cell (TLC) NAND stores three bits per cell and is susceptible to thermal impact on data retention
How does PSA work?
Based on the semiconductor device specification, a device with PSA will allow pre-programming a portion of an MLC device in SLC mode. Once that SLC portion of the device is programmed, the remainder of the device will be programmed in MLC mode.
For example: Micron 32 GByte eMMC 5.0 Device: MTFC32GAKAExx-3M supports PSA. The devices programs the first 13.75 GB in SLC mode and programs the remaining.
How does Data I/O support PSA?
Data I/O will support the PSA feature in the algorithm if the device supports it. In the device search and footnotes of the algorithm we will display the PSA size limit for the specific semiconductor device. This means that if a customer is programming a device with PSA on the LumenX programmers, the LumenX Job Creator software will alert you that your data file exceeds the maximum preload limits for the device.
The customer can then decide if they want to modify their job file, program only in the SLC mode or program the full amount allowed by the PSA feature and continue to program the rest in MLC mode.
Request more information
For questions about Production State Awareness and how it impacts your programming job, contact your Data I/O representative below.
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