Conduant Update

I wanted to remind you of the playback looping feature available on several of our recorders. Available since SDK 7.6, playback looping allows the specification of a starting and ending address within the recorded data set to allow continuous playback to an external data port such as FPDP, Serial FPDP or LVDS. This feature will repeatedly output the specified data set for simulation or as required in required in many diverse applications. One example of the way this feature is being used is in optimization of RF receivers.By capturing live data from field experiments, the playback can be continuously looped on playback to allow optimization of RF receiver hardware or software.

Many of our recorders support partitioning. This feature can be used to divide the available storage capacity into as many as 256 partitions of varying sizes. When a partition is in use all the normal StreamStor functions are available at full speed performance but with reduced capacity. Partitions can be used to record in wrap mode (circular buffer) without using the full capacity of the system. Partitions can be overwritten and reused without affecting the data in any other partition. An example of partition usage is to record sensor data continuously in wrap mode for very ling periods of time until an event occurs that triggers the recording to stop thereby preserving the data relative to the event. The recording can then be immediately restarted in a new partition to avoid missing new events without overwriting the initial event.

One of the things we are consistently asked about is how can the failure of a disk drive be predicted. While disk drive reliability has improved dramatically over the last 20 years, it would obviously be desirable to predict a failure before it occurs. Disk drive manufacturers (especially IBM) have created a system called S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis, and Reporting Technology) that was intended to provide just such a mechanism. Unfortunately it has never quite achieved the intended result and failure prediction remains an elusive goal. There are also many myths about disk drive reliability that may or may not be true such as temperature sensitivity and usage patterns effecting drive reliability. If you are interested in reading more about this subject, Google published a paper describing their research into disk drive failure prediction. You can find that paper here: http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf