1 research outputs found
Architectural Techniques for Improving NAND Flash Memory Reliability
Raw bit errors are common in NAND flash memory and will increase in the
future. These errors reduce flash reliability and limit the lifetime of a flash
memory device. We aim to improve flash reliability with a multitude of low-cost
architectural techniques. We show that NAND flash memory reliability can be
improved at low cost and with low performance overhead by deploying various
architectural techniques that are aware of higher-level application behavior
and underlying flash device characteristics.
We analyze flash error characteristics and workload behavior through
experimental characterization, and design new flash controller algorithms that
use the insights gained from our analysis to improve flash reliability at a low
cost. We investigate four directions through this approach. (1) We propose a
new technique called WARM that improves flash reliability by 12.9 times by
managing flash retention differently for write-hot data and write-cold data.
(2) We propose a new framework that learns an online flash channel model for
each chip and enables four new flash controller algorithms to improve flash
reliability by up to 69.9%. (3) We identify three new error characteristics in
3D NAND through a comprehensive experimental characterization of real 3D NAND
chips, and propose four new techniques that mitigate these new errors and
improve 3D NAND reliability by up to 66.9%. (4) We propose a new technique
called HeatWatch that improves 3D NAND reliability by 3.85 times by utilizing
self-healing effect to mitigate retention errors in 3D NAND.Comment: Thesis, Carnegie Mellon University (2018