8 research outputs found
Write-Once-Memory Codes by Source Polarization
We propose a new Write-Once-Memory (WOM) coding scheme based on source
polarization. By applying a source polarization transformation on the
to-be-determined codeword, the proposed WOM coding scheme encodes information
into the bits in the high-entropy set. We prove in this paper that the proposed
WOM codes are capacity-achieving. WOM codes have found many applications in
modern data storage systems, such as flash memories.Comment: 5 pages, Proceedings of the International Conference on Computing,
Networking and Communications (ICNC 2015), Anaheim, California, USA, February
16-19, 201
When Do WOM Codes Improve the Erasure Factor in Flash Memories?
Flash memory is a write-once medium in which reprogramming cells requires
first erasing the block that contains them. The lifetime of the flash is a
function of the number of block erasures and can be as small as several
thousands. To reduce the number of block erasures, pages, which are the
smallest write unit, are rewritten out-of-place in the memory. A Write-once
memory (WOM) code is a coding scheme which enables to write multiple times to
the block before an erasure. However, these codes come with significant rate
loss. For example, the rate for writing twice (with the same rate) is at most
0.77.
In this paper, we study WOM codes and their tradeoff between rate loss and
reduction in the number of block erasures, when pages are written uniformly at
random. First, we introduce a new measure, called erasure factor, that reflects
both the number of block erasures and the amount of data that can be written on
each block. A key point in our analysis is that this tradeoff depends upon the
specific implementation of WOM codes in the memory. We consider two systems
that use WOM codes; a conventional scheme that was commonly used, and a new
recent design that preserves the overall storage capacity. While the first
system can improve the erasure factor only when the storage rate is at most
0.6442, we show that the second scheme always improves this figure of merit.Comment: to be presented at ISIT 201
Rank-Modulation Rewrite Coding for Flash Memories
The current flash memory technology focuses on the cost minimization of its static storage capacity. However, the resulting approach supports a relatively small number of program-erase cycles. This technology is effective for consumer devices (e.g., smartphones and cameras) where the number of program-erase cycles is small. However, it is not economical for enterprise storage systems that require a large number of lifetime writes. The proposed approach in this paper for alleviating this problem consists of the efficient integration of two key ideas: 1) improving reliability and endurance by representing the information using relative values via the rank modulation scheme and 2) increasing the overall (lifetime) capacity of the flash device via rewriting codes, namely, performing multiple writes per cell before erasure. This paper presents a new coding scheme that combines rank-modulation with rewriting. The key benefits of the new scheme include: 1) the ability to store close to 2 bit per cell on each write with minimal impact on the lifetime of the memory and 2) efficient encoding and decoding algorithms that make use of capacity-achieving write-once-memory codes that were proposed recently
Error correction and partial information rewriting for flash memories
This paper considers the partial information rewriting problem for flash memories. In this problem, the state of information can only be updated to a limited number of new states, and errors may occur in memory cells between two adjacent updates. We propose two coding schemes based on the models of trajectory codes. The bounds on achievable code rates are shown using polar WOM coding. Our schemes generalize the existing rewriting codes in multiple ways, and can be applied to various practical scenarios such as file editing, log-based file systems and file synchronization systems
Algorithms and Data Representations for Emerging Non-Volatile Memories
The evolution of data storage technologies has been extraordinary. Hard disk drives
that fit in current personal computers have the capacity that requires tons of transistors
to achieve in 1970s. Today, we are at the beginning of the era of non-volatile memory
(NVM). NVMs provide excellent performance such as random access, high I/O speed, low
power consumption, and so on. The storage density of NVMs keeps increasing following
Moore’s law. However, higher storage density also brings significant data reliability issues.
When chip geometries scale down, memory cells (e.g. transistors) are aligned much closer
to each other, and noise in the devices will become no longer negligible. Consequently,
data will be more prone to errors and devices will have much shorter longevity.
This dissertation focuses on mitigating the reliability and the endurance issues for two
major NVMs, namely, NAND flash memory and phase-change memory (PCM). Our main
research tools include a set of coding techniques for the communication channels implied
by flash memory and PCM. To approach the problems, at bit level we design error
correcting codes tailored for the asymmetric errors in flash and PCM, we propose joint
coding scheme for endurance and reliability, error scrubbing methods for controlling storage
channel quality, and study codes that are inherently resisting to typical errors in flash
and PCM; at higher levels, we are interested in analyzing the structures and the meanings
of the stored data, and propose methods that pass such metadata to help further improve
the coding performance at bit level. The highlights of this dissertation include the first
set of write-once memory code constructions which correct a significant number of errors,
a practical framework which corrects errors utilizing the redundancies in texts, the first
report of the performance of polar codes for flash memories, and the emulation of rank
modulation codes in NAND flash chips
Towards Endurable, Reliable and Secure Flash Memories-a Coding Theory Application
Storage systems are experiencing a historical paradigm shift from hard disk to nonvolatile memories due to its advantages such as higher density, smaller size and non-volatility. On the other hand, Solid Storage Disk (SSD) also poses critical challenges to application and system designers. The first challenge is called endurance. Endurance means flash memory can only experience a limited number of program/erase cycles, and after that the cell quality degradation can no longer be accommodated by the memory system fault tolerance capacity. The second challenge is called reliability, which means flash cells are sensitive to various noise and disturbs, i.e., data may change unintentionally after experiencing noise/disturbs. The third challenge is called security, which means it is impossible or costly to delete files from flash memory securely without leaking information to possible eavesdroppers.
In this dissertation, we first study noise modeling and capacity analysis for NAND flash memories (which is the most popular flash memory in market), which gains us some insight on how flash memories are working and their unique noise. Second, based on the characteristics of content-replication codewords in flash memories, we propose a joint decoder to enhance the flash memory reliability. Third, we explore data representation schemes in flash memories and optimal rewriting code constructions in order to solve the endurance problem. Fourth, in order to make our rewriting code more practical, we study noisy write-efficient memories and Write-Once Memory (WOM) codes against inter-cell interference in NAND memories. Finally, motivated by the secure deletion problem in flash memories, we study coding schemes to solve both the endurance and the security issues in flash memories. This work presents a series of information theory and coding theory research studies on the aforesaid three critical issues, and shows that how coding theory can be utilized to address these challenges