Tuxera launches Persistence Manager

Tuxera Persistence Manager is a premium add-on feature for the company’s commercial- grade exFAT file system implementation, Microsoft exFAT by Tuxera. The feature is targeted at embedded systems designers working with Linux-based data recorders, especially in automotive, industrial applications, consumer electronics, and commercial drones.

The applications of this technology cover use cases where continuous video recording is required, and data needs to be preserved and available. In these cases, the data captured through video is critical to inform decisions and can serve as evidence, for example, in case of a traffic incident. Devices like digital video recorders (DVRs) and dashcams for cars, industrial-grade cameras used in security or vision systems, and commercial drones collecting data about the environment are possible target devices for this innovation.

Tuxera Persistence Manager enables the embedded systems designer to control, using software, how much data is written to cache before its content is committed to the storage media and at what time interval.

Data flushing is the process of committing all data from the memory buffers to the storage media. It prevents losing data in case of sudden power cut, and it is therefore critical in ensuring the power fail-safety of a system.

“Normally, recording devices save data to volatile memory,” says Teemu Sivonen, Product Manager at Tuxera. “If the device abruptly loses power, such as from being unplugged or from a hardware defect, the data in the process of being recorded has not had time to flush to disk and is lost forever.”

In a power-loss situation, super- or ultra-capacitors are typically used to provide a small amount of power while the data flush occurs. But supercapacitors can be very expensive depending on capacity, voltage, and other special requirements. Based on a real customer scenario, in an automotive DVR system the cost can range up to $4 or more per supercapacitor. Additionally, hardware components are subject to supply chain changes and vulnerability, and thus can delay a product going to market according to required product roadmaps.

With this feature, the dependency on supercapacitors to provide power-fail safety and prevent data loss can be optimised. The software gives system designers the flexibility to determine the size of the data chunks to flush and when, ensuring data is safely stored in the event of crash or power loss.

An additional benefit for Tuxera’s exFAT customers is to achieve longer life expectancy of the flash storage media when compared to implementing more complex alternatives – such as implementing flushes at the application level or by tweaking the system configuration. Continuous writing, erasing, and rewriting data to the storage fragments and wears the flash, lowering the number of P/E cycles it can endure. Tuxera’s exFAT solution features patented allocation techniques that alleviate the problem of early flash burnout – working in tandem with Tuxera Persistence Manager.

“If a vehicle crashes while it is recording video on a dashboard camera, a resulting power loss can cause the loss of the last 30 seconds or more of the recording,” Sivonen adds. “Tuxera Persistence Manager ensures that if the recording device unexpectedly loses power, as much data as possible is saved and committed to storage. The user can adjust the software’s settings to control how often the device flushes data to the disk, minimising both the size of supercapacitor required and the amount of data at risk.”

Tuxera Persistence Manager will be demoed at Tuxera’s booth at embedded world 2024, in Hall 4, Booth 4-438. The company welcomes interested customer prospects, partners, media, and analysts to talk with their experts at the booth.