• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.12A no.3 s.93
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• pp.205-214
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• 2005

Flash memory is at high speed used as storage of personal information utilities, ubiquitous computing environments, mobile phones, electronic goods, etc. This is because flash memory has the characteristics of low electronic power, non-volatile storage, high performance, physical stability, portability, and so on. However, differently from hard disks, it has a weak point that overwrites on already written block of flash memory is impossible to be done. In order to make an overwrite possible, an erase operation on the written block should be performed before the overwrite, which lowers the performance of flash memory highly. In order to solve this problem the flash memory controller maintains a system software module called the flash translation layer(FTL). Of many proposed FTL schemes, the log block buffer scheme is best known so far. This scheme uses a small number of log blocks of flash memory as a write buffer, which reduces the number of erase operations by overwrites, leading to good performance. However, this scheme shows a weakness of low page usability of log blocks. In this paper, we propose an enhanced log block buffer scheme, FAST(Full Associative Sector Translation), which improves the page usability of each log block by fully associating sectors to be written by overwrites to the entire log blocks. We also show that our FAST scheme outperforms the log block buffer scheme.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.254-254
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• 2011

The memories with nano-particles are very attractive because they are promising candidates for low operating voltage, long retention time and fast program/erase speed. In recent, various nano-floating gate memories with metal-oxide nanocrystals embedded in organic and inorganic layers have been reported. Because of the carrier generation in semiconductor, induced photon pulse enhanced the program/erase speed of memory device. We studied photo-induced electrical properties of these metal-oxide nanocrystal memory devices. At first, 2~10-nm-thick Sn and In metals were deposited by using thermal evaporation onto Si wafer including a channel with $n^+$ poly-Si source/drain in which the length and width are 10 ${\mu}m$ each. Then, a poly-amic-acid (PAA) was spin coated on the deposited Sn film. The PAA precursor used in this study was prepared by dissolving biphenyl-tetracarboxylic dianhydride-phenylene diamine (BPDA-PDA) commercial polyamic acid in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidon (NMP). Then the samples were cured at 400$^{\circ}C$ for 1 hour in N atmosphere after drying at 135$^{\circ}C$ for 30 min through rapid thermal annealing. The deposition of aluminum layer with thickness of 200 nm was followed by using a thermal evaporator, and then the gate electrode was defined by photolithography and etching. The electrical properties were measured at room temperature using an HP4156a precision semiconductor parameter analyzer and an Agilent 81101A pulse generator. Also, the optical pulse for the study on photo-induced electrical properties was applied by Xeon lamp light source and a monochromator system.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.18-29
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• 2008

NAND Flash memory has been growing popular storage device for the last years because of its low power consumption, fast access speed, shock resistance and light weight properties. However, it has the distinct characteristics such as erase-before-write architecture, asymmetric read/write/erase speed, and the limitation on the number of erasure per block. Due to these limitations, various Flash Translation Layers (FTLs) have been proposed to effectively use NAND flash memory. The systems that adopted the conventional FTL may result in severe performance degradation by the hot data which are frequently requested data for overwrite in the same logical address. In this paper, we propose a novel FTL algorithm called Adaptive Flash Translation Layer (AFTL) which uses sector mapping method for hot data and log-based block mapping method for cold data. Our system removes the redundant write operations and the erase operations by the separating hot data from cold data. Moreover, the read performance is enhanced according to sector translation that tends to use a few read operations. A series of experiments was organized to inspect the performance of the proposed method, and they show very impressive results.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.402-415
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• 2001

Advantages of flash memories are their shock resistance and fast read speed, which is much faster than that of a HDD. Because of these characteristics, they are increasingly used in the traditional household electric appliance and portable handset and therefore, development of file systems which use them as storage medium is increasingly needed. But they have two problems as storage medium. First, data stored in them cannot be overwritten: it must be erased before new data can be stored. Unfortunately, this erase operation usually takes about one second. Consequently, updating data in flash memories takes long time. In this paper, their problem is solved by using a data update mechanism like LFS(Log-structured File System). Second, their erase operations are restricted. We propose novel cleaning policy in order to increase the life cycle. We implemented FAT file system, which is suitable to small storage medium and solved problems, which usually happen in implementing FAT. We evaluated the performance of sequential writes and random writes on our implemented flash file system.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.567-582
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• 2000

We propose a new way of managing flash memory space for flash memory-specific file system based on log-structured file system. Flash memory has attractive features such as non-volatility, and fast I/O speed, but it also suffers from inability to update in place and limited usage cycles. These drawbacks require many changes to conventional storage (file) management techniques. Our focus is on lowering cleaning cost and evenly utilizing flash memory cells while maintaining a balance between the two often-conflicting goals. The proposed cleaning method performs well especially when storage utilization and the degree of locality are high. The cleaning efficiency is enhanced by dynamically separating cold data and non-cold data. The second goal, cycle-leveling is achieved to the degree where the maximum difference between erase cycles is below the error range of the hardware. Simulation results show that the proposed method has significant benefit over naxve methods: maximum of 35% reduction in cleaning cost with even spreading writes across segments.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.673-677
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• 2010

Recently, NAND flash memory has been widely used in embedded systems, personal computers, and server systems because of its attractive features, such as non-volatility, fast access speed, shock resistance, and low power consumption. Due to its hardware characteristics, specifically its 'erase-before-write' feature, Flash Translation Layer is required for using flash memory like hard disk drive. Many FTL schemes have been proposed, but conventional FTL schemes have problems such as block thrashing and block associativity problem. The KAST scheme tried to solve these problems by limiting the number of associations between data block and log block to K. But it has also block thrashing problem in random access I/O pattern. In this paper, we proposed a new FTL scheme, UDA-LBAST. Like KAST, the proposed scheme also limits the log block association, but does not limit data block association. So we could minimize the cost of merge operations, and reduce merge costs by using a new block reclaim scheme, log block garbage collection.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.427-427
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• 2012

Ferroelectric-gate field effect transistor based memory using a nanowire as a conducting channel offers exceptional advantages over conventional memory devices, like small cell size, low-voltage operation, low power consumption, fast programming/erase speed and non-volatility. We successfully fabricated ferroelectric nonvolatile memory devices using both n-type and p-type Si nanowires coated with organic ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE)] via a low temperature fabrication process. The devices performance was carefully characterized in terms of their electrical transport, retention time and endurance test. Our p-type Si NW ferroelectric memory devices exhibit excellent memory characteristics with a large modulation in channel conductance between ON and OFF states exceeding $10^5$; long retention time of over $5{\times}10^4$ sec and high endurance of over 105 programming cycles while maintaining ON/OFF ratio higher $10^3$. This result offers a viable way to fabricate a high performance high-density nonvolatile memory device using a low temperature fabrication processing technique, which makes it suitable for flexible electronics.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.120-120
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• 2011

Graphene is a carbon based material and it has great potential of being utilized in various fields such as electronics, optics, and mechanics. In order to develop graphene-based logic systems, graphene field-effect transistor (GFET) has been extensively explored. GFET requires supporting devices, such as volatile memory, to function in an embedded logic system. As far as we understand, graphene has not been studied for volatile memory application, although several graphene non-volatile memories (GNVMs) have been reported. However, we think that these GNVM are unable to serve the logic system properly due to the very slow program/read speed. In this study, a GVM based on the GFET structure and using an engineered graphene channel is proposed. By manipulating the deposition condition, charge traps are introduced to graphene channel, which store charges temporarily, so as to enable volatile data storage for GFET. The proposed GVM shows satisfying performance in fast program/erase (P/E) and read speed. Moreover, this GVM has good compatibility with GFET in device fabrication process. This GVM can be designed to be dynamic random access memory (DRAM) in serving the logic systems application. We demonstrated GVM with the structure of FET. By manipulating the graphene synthesis process, we could engineer the charge trap density of graphene layer. In the range that our measurement system can support, we achieved a high performance of GVM in refresh (>10 ${\mu}s$) and retention time (~100 s). Because of high speed, when compared with other graphene based memory devices, GVM proposed in this study can be a strong contender for future electrical system applications.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.125-133
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• 2014

The column-oriented database storage is a very advanced model for large-volume data analysis systems because of its superior I/O performance. Traditional data storages exploit row-oriented storage where the attributes of a record are placed contiguously in hard disk for fast write operations. However, for search-mostly datawarehouse systems, column-oriented storage has become a more proper model because of its superior read performance. Recently, solid state drive using MLC flash memory is largely recognized as the preferred storage media for high-speed data analysis systems. The features of non-volatility, low power consumption, and fast access time for read operations are sufficient grounds to support flash memory as major storage components of modern database servers. However, we need to improve traditional transaction management scheme due to the relatively slow characteristics of column compression and flash operation as compared to RAM memory. In this research, we propose a new scheme called Column-aware Multi-Version Locking (CaMVL) scheme for efficient transaction processing. CaMVL improves transaction performance by using compression lock and multi version reads for efficiently handling slow flash write/erase operation in lock management process. We also propose a simulation model to show the performance of CaMVL. Based on the results of the performance evaluation, we conclude that CaMVL scheme outperforms the traditional scheme.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.15D no.6
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• pp.755-766
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• 2008

Recently, NAND flash memory is becoming into the spotlight as a next-generation storage device because of its small size, fast speed, low power consumption, and etc. compared to the hard disk. However, due to the distinct characteristics such as erase-before-write architecture, asymmetric operation speed and unit, disk-based systems and applications may result in severe performance degradation when directly implementing them on NAND flash memory. Especially when a B-tree is implemented on NAND flash memory, intensive overwrite operations may be caused by record inserting, deleting, and reorganizing. These may result in severe performance degradation. Although ${\mu}$-tree has been proposed in order to overcome this problem, it suffers from frequent node split and rapid increment of its height. In this paper, we propose Log-Structured B-Tree(LSB-Tree) where the corresponding log node to a leaf node is allocated for update operation and then the modified data in the log node is stored at only one write operation. LSB-tree reduces additional write operations by deferring the change of parent nodes. Also, it reduces the write operation by switching a log node to a new leaf node when inserting the data sequentially by the key order. Finally, we show that LSB-tree yields a better performance on NAND flash memory by comparing it to ${\mu}$-tree through various experiments.