8000 radios and EMMC storage

There's a bit of a long story here which, on one hand I don't want to bore you with, but on the other hand I would like to reassure you and the details may help.

I suspect I have posted here or somewhere else the saga surrounding the SD Cards in the FLEX-6000 series so I don't want to go into a lot of detail other than to say that 1) the cards we selected originally were designed for a minimum 10-year life span in our application (based on our write cycles, durability of memory card, etc.), but 2) due to multiple defects that surfaced over the years with the card itself, the driver that supports the card and the processor that talks to the card, corruption of the card occurred in multiple situations leading to a need to replace the card. It really was a perfect storm that caused the issues.

With the new processor and eMMC card, while we do not have the ability to easily replace the actual eMMC part on the board (but it is possible), we have connectorized the CPU board with the eMMC on-board and the entire sub-assembly is replaceable. Not only this, but the cost to do so is relatively low — low enough in fact that it did not make sense to handle the memory another way. So our plan is, therefore, 1) by using a CPU/eMMC that are integrated from the start with drivers and a large audience for this complete system we hope to avoid any driver/CPU issues that would lead to the corruption that caused the issues in the FLEX-6000 radios, and 2) as memory needs replacement after many years, this can be accomplished by replacing the CPU board which is relatively inexpensive.