Ever since we announced our high performance file system Reliance Nitro, we have been getting questions on how it compares to the original Reliance file system. Below is a quick-reference table noting some of the differences between the two. For a more detailed comparison (including performance benchmarks), please contact us.

Attributes	Reliance	Reliance Nitro	Recommendation
High performance on large number of files  (100+)		√	If your device stores a large number of files in a single directory, Nitro will perform much faster than Reliance.
High performance on large files		√	Nitro’s extent based design allows it to perform faster on larger files. For sake of this comparison, files can be considered large if they are 10+ times the block size of the device
Frequent transaction points		√	Nitro introduces a new structure called Delta transactions which speed up the time taken to conduct transaction points. Depending on how often you conduct transactions points, Nitro can provide significant advantage
Random I/O performance most critical	√	√	Reliance’s block based design provides an advantage on random I/O on small files. On large files both Reliance and Nitro perform equally well on this metric
Sequential I/O  performance most critical		√	Nitro outperforms Reliance on sequential I/O due to its extent based design
Support for Windows Mobile		√	FlashFX Pro 4.0 for Windows Mobile enables a new discard interface that allows Nitro to have much faster write speeds on flash memory
File-size limit	32-bit	64-bit	Nitro uses 64-bit variables for file size limits allowing for very large file sizes.
Read-only version	√		Reliance currently provides a read-only version called Reliance Reader. Nitro currently does not provide a reader application – this is scheduled for v2

July 20th, 2009 Subscribe to the RSS feed!