An efficient management scheme for large-scale flash-memory storage systems

Flash memory is among the top choices for storage media in ubiquitous computing. With a strong demand of high-capacity storage devices, the usages of flash memory quickly grow beyond their original designs. The very distinct characteristics of flash memory introduce serious challenges to engineers in resolving the quick degradation of system performance and the huge demand of main-memory space for flash-memory management when high-capacity flash memory is considered. Although some brute-force solutions could be taken, such as the enlarging of management granularity for flash memory, we showed that little advantage is received when system performance is considered. This paper proposes a flexible management scheme for large-scale flash-memory storage systems. The objective is to efficiently manage high-capacity flash-memory storage systems based on the behaviors of realistic access patterns. The proposed scheme could significantly reduce the main-memory usages without noticeable performance degradation.