SLC-lite

What is your priority when choosing NAND flash type for your industrial automation systems: performance, reliability, or cost? Which type of flash memory would be more appropriate for your applications: MLC, SLC, or SLC-lite?

Of all the factors that are often taken into consideration when choosing flash SSD for embedded and industrial applications, reliability is of the utmost importance and cannot be compromised at any condition. In terms of reliability, SLC is considered the most preferred flash type not only because of its higher number of P/E cycles but also its greater cell endurance. As its name suggests, SLC flash stores only one data bit per cell which contributes to faster transfer speeds, lower power consumption and higher endurance rating. These facts adequately prove that SLC is a good fit in embedded systems, but the only downside to SLC is decisive --- it costs high --- compared with MLC technology. Prevalently-found in consumer-grade products, MLC flash, on the contrary, has a lower cost and offers larger capacity, but it suffers from higher erase rates and slower write performance. No matter which solution you go for, neither can you have it all.