A fault-tolerant solid state mass memory for highly reliable instrumentation

Often, in space missions, a large amount of data from on board instrumentation must be stored in highly reliable mass memories. In this paper the implementation of a prototype of a Solid State Mass Memory (SSMM) for high reliability demanding applications is presented. A description of the SSMM architecture is given together with an in depth description of the prototype. The SSMM has been implemented by using a fast prototyping methodology. By using this technique, a flexible re-programmable test bed useful for the testing of both the conventional and faulty (using the fault-injection approach) functionality of the system has been obtained.