• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.201-205
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• 2008

The flash memory is widely used as a main storage of embedded devices. It is adopted as a storage of database as growing the capacity of the flash memory. We run TPC-C benchmark on various FTL algorithms. But, the database shows poor performance on flash memory because the characteristic of I/O requests is full random. In this paper, we show the performance of all existing FTL algorithms is very poor. Especially, the FTL algorithm known as good at small mobile equipment shows worst performance. In addition, the chip-inter leaving which is a technique to improve the performance of the flash memory doesn't work well. In this paper, we inform you the reason that we need a new FTL algorithm and the direction for the database in the future.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.27-35
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• 2021

NAND flash memory-based SSD needs an internal software, Flash Translation Layer(FTL) to provide traditional block device interface to the host because of its physical constraints, such as erase-before-write and large erase block. However, because useful host-side information cannot be delivered to FTL through the narrow block device interface, SSDs suffer from a variety of problems such as increasing garbage collection overhead, large tail-latency, and unpredictable I/O latency. Otherwise, the new type of SSD, open-channel SSD exposes the internal structure of SSD to the host so that underlying NAND flash memory can be managed directly by the host-level FTL. Especially, I/O data classification by using host-side information can achieve the reduction of garbage collection overhead. In this paper, we propose a new scheme to reduce garbage collection overhead of open-channel SSD by separating the journal from other file data for the journaling filesystem. Because journal has different lifespan with other file data, the Write Amplification Factor (WAF) caused by garbage collection can be reduced. The proposed scheme is implemented by modifying the host-level FTL of Linux and evaluated with both Fio and Filebench. According to the experiment results, the proposed scheme improves I/O performance by 46%~50% while reducing the WAF of open-channel SSDs by more than 33% compared to the previous one.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.17-22
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• 2010

As deployments of Flash memory are spreading out rapidly from tiny USB storages to large DB servers, interoperability become an indispensable requirement for Flash memory software architecture. For the purpose, many systems make use of the conventional FAT file system and FTL (Flash Translation Layer) software as a de facto standard. However, the tactless combination of the FAT file system and FTL does not satisfy diverse other requirements of a variety of systems. In this paper, we propose a novel reconfigurable integrated Flash memory software architecture, named INFLAWARE (INtegrated FLAsh softWARE) that supports not only interoperability but also reconfigurability and performance enhancement. Real implementation based experimental results have shown that INFLAWARE can achieve improvements of memory footprint up to 27% with an average of 19%, compared with the conventional FAT and FTL combination. Also, by using map_destroy technique, it can reduce response times of various applications up to 21% with an average of 10%.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.34 no.12B
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• pp.1418-1425
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• 2009

This paper proposes a novel FTL (Flash Translation Layer) algorithm based on sector-level mapping to reduce the number of total erase operations in flash memory accesses. The proposed algorithm can reduce the number of erase operations by utilizing the sector-level mapping table when writing data at flash memory. Sector-level mapping technique reduces flash memory access time and extendsthe life time of the flash memory. In the algorithm, wear-leveling is implemented by selecting victim blocks having the minimal number of erase operations, when empty spaces for write are not available. To evaluate the performance of the proposed FTL algorithm, experiments were performed on several applications, such as MP3 players, MPEG players, web browsers and document editors. The proposed algorithm reduces the number of erase operations by 72.4% and 61.9%, when compared with well-known BAST and FAST algorithms, respectively.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.07b
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• pp.932-935
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• 2002

In this paper, we introduce new FTL(Flash Translation Layer) driver algorithm that tolerate the power off errors. FTL driver is the software that provide the block device interface to the upper layer software such as file systems or application programs that using the flash memory as a block device interfaced storage. Usually, the flash memory is used as the storage devices of the mobile system due to its low power consumption and small form factor. In mobile system, the state of the power supplement is not stable, because it using the small sized battery that has limited capacity. So, a sudden power off failure can be occurred when we read or write the data on the flash memory. During the write operation, power off failure may introduce the incomplete write operation. Incomplete write operation denotes the inconsistency of the data in flash memory. To provide the stable storage facility with flash memory in mobile system, FTL should provide the fault tolerance against the power off failure. SSR (Simple Sector Remapper) is a fault tolerant FTL driver that provides block device interface and also provides tolerance against power off errors.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.508-519
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• 2007

Flash memory based storage has been used in various mobile systems and now is to be used in Laptop computers in the name of Solid State Disk. The Flash memory has not only merits in terms of weight, shock resistance, and power consumption but also limitations like erase-before-write property. To overcome these limitations, Flash memory based storage requires special address mapping software called FTL(Flash-memory Translation Layer), which often performs merge operation for block recycling. In order to reduce block recycling cost in NAND Flash memory based storage, we introduce another block recycling scheme which we call migration. As a result, the FTL can select either merge or migration depending on their costs for each block recycling. Experimental results with Postmark benchmark and embedded system workload show that this cost-based selection of migration/merge operation improves the performance of Flash memory based storage. Also, we present a solution of macroscopic optimal migration/merge sequence that minimizes a block recycling cost for each migration/merge combination period. Experimental results show that the performance of Flash memory based storage can be more improved by the macroscopic optimization than the simple cost-based selection.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.36 no.7B
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• pp.818-826
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• 2011

This paper proposes a novel FTL (Flash Translation Layer) algorithm employing sector-level mapping technique based on locality to reduce the number of erase operations in flash memory accesses. Sector-level mapping technique shows higher performance than other mapping techniques, even if it requires a large mapping table. The proposed algorithm reduces the size of mapping table by employing dynamic table update, processes sequential writes by exploiting sequential locality and extracts hot sector in random writes. Experimental results show that the number of erase operations has been reduced by 75.4%, 65.8%, and 10.3% respectively when compared with well-known BAST, FAST and sector mapping algorithms.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.289-297
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• 2020

Although flash disks are being used widely instead of hard disks, it is difficult to optimize for effective utilization of flash disks because overwrite in place is impossible and the power consumption and time required for read, write, and erase operations are all different. One of these optimization issues is a cache management strategy to minimize write operations. The cache operates at two levels: an operating system equipped with flash disks and a translation layer within the flash disk. Most studies deal with the operating system-level cache strategy. In this study, we implement and analyse the DPW-LRU algorithm which is one of the recently proposed operating system cache replacement algorithms to apply to FTL, and grope with some improvements. As a result of the experiment, the DPW-LRU algorithm maintained superiority even in the FTL environment, and showed better performance with a slight improvement.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.90-102
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• 2010

Flash memory has been widely used as an important storage device for consumer electronics. For the flash memory-based storage systems, FTL (Flash Translation Layer) is used to handle the mapping between a logical page address and a physical page address. Especially, log buffer-based FTLs provide a good performance with small-sized mapping information. In designing the log buffer-based FTL, one important factor is to determine the mapping structure between data blocks and log blocks, called associativity. While previous works use static associativity fixed at the design time, we propose a new log block mapping scheme which adjusts associativity based on the run-time workload. Our proposed scheme improves the I/O performance about 5~16% compared to the static scheme by adjusting the associativity to provide the best performance.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.19D no.2
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• pp.161-186
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• 2012

Recently, the flash memory consistently increases the storage capacity while the price of the memory is being cheap. This makes the mass storage SSD(Solid State Drive) popular. The flash memory, however, has a lot of defects. In order that these defects should be complimented, it is needed to use the FTL(Flash Translation Layer) as a special layer. To operate restrictions of the hardware efficiently, the FTL that is essential to work plays a role of transferring from the logical sector number of file systems to the physical sector number of the flash memory. Especially, the poor performance is attributed to Erase-Before-Write among the flash memory's restrictions, and even if there are lots of studies based on the log block, a few problems still exists in order for the mass storage flash memory to be operated. If the FAST based on Log Block-Based Flash often is generated in the wide locality causing the random writing, the merge operation will be occur as the sectors is not used in the data block. In other words, the block thrashing which is not effective occurs and then, the flash memory's performance get worse. If the log-block makes the overwriting caused, the log-block is executed like a cache and this technique contributes to developing the flash memory performance improvement. This study for the improvement of the random writing demonstrates that the log block is operated like not only the cache but also the entire flash memory so that the merge operation and the erase operation are diminished as there are a distinct mapping table called as the offset mapping table for the operation. The new FTL is to be defined as the XAST(extensively-Associative Sector Translation). The XAST manages the offset mapping table with efficiency based on the spatial locality and temporal locality.