[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk on Compact PCI platform

[Steven Critchfield]

On Fri, 2004-05-21 at 12:39, George Pajari wrote:
> > A modern CF card has about 10,000 write cycles before it starts
> > failing.
> 
> Don't know where you're buying that crap but quality CF modules have a
> per-sector lifetime of between 300,000 and 2,000,000 write cycles. On top of
> this, good quality CF modules have very sophisticated wear levelling
> firmware that map external block addresses to different physical sector
> addresses to reduce the possibility of "burning out" specific sectors from
> frequent updates.
> 
> In addition to my work with NetVoice Communications I am also associated
> with a Linux fax software company (www.faximum.com) that ships a fax server
> appliance which run entirely on CF. We have customers sending hundreds of
> faxes per day (comparable to hundreds of voice mails per day) without any
> trouble after a year and a half (nor would we expect any problem).
> 
> I.M.H.O. The fears expressed on this list about the lifetime of CF modules
> are not based on either the facts or empirical evidence.

Did you not listen to what I related here? I have been working in the
medical dictation/transcription field for several years now, and we are
experiencing flash cards that wear out. These cards are being used in
handheld voice recorders. For a heavy user, we get less than 2 years on
the card before it fails. For others, it is a longer term.

The problem still isn't whether or not it can do it, but rather what is
the cost of failure. The problem exists with all hardware, not just
flash. Flash has a known estimated life just like other components, it
is just measured differently. 

So please understand that we are exuding concern over longterm
reliability of a system that is being designed probably to be tossed
after a few years. 
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>