Cervoz Powerguard: the trusted protection against power failure

Spain and Texas, US are a couple of the latest regions that have suffered days without electricity due to unprecedented snow storms. When the power is out, all operations come to a halt. The earliest SSDs would have immediately shut down, losing whatever data they were in the process of storing. In today’s world, this would prove to be a costly loss for any company.  

Cervoz Technology Co., Ltd. engineered the power loss protection, aptly named the Powerguard, to ensure that companies, in today’s data-reliant environment, are protected from such catastrophic losses. The latest family of Powerguard storage solutions is the T376 in the form factors SSD, mSATA, and M.2 2280. As its name suggests, the T376 family uses TLC technology for a larger capacity at a lower cost. The launch of the TLC Powerguard storage modules comes after the success that Cervoz has had with its M336 MLC Powerguard products, which were first launched in 2017 and are still available for purchase. 

How the Powerguard works is that Cervoz Flash products with this function have built-in tantalum capacitors storing extra power. When the module’s controller senses that the power supply is below a certain, predetermined level, it will inform the host to first and foremost stop sending more data.

Although data transmission has stopped, there will be data that remain in the DRAM, so this is when the capacitors will provide the power needed to enable the remaining data to be flushed out to NAND. In doing so, the Powerguard protects both the firmware and the mapping table simultaneously, and thus data integrity is preserved. While operating with power, these Powerguard storage modules keep the tantalum capacitors charged with 12V power.

In practice, the Powerguard module can provide up to 40 times more power than a module without any power loss protection. This capacity was verified via our Engineering Verification Test (EVT). The test confirmed that this extra power provided by the Powerguard enabled all data to be properly processed so that no errors were found. These solutions have proven extremely popular with Cervoz’s customers, especially those in IIOT, factory automation and smart manufacturing.

Aside from these Powerguard-specific storage modules, the Cervoz military-grade SSD, the M339, comes with the Powerguard function as well. In compliance with US military standard MIL-STD-810G, these SSDs are equipped to function optimally in rugged environment. As such, power loss protection is a must, allowing these mission-critical operations to take place smoothly regardless of the challenge.

No matter the environment or situation, the Powerguard provides a reliable protection for data and data integrity against power failure.