An energy-efficient I/O request mechanism for multi-bank flash-memory storage systems
Chin-Hsien Wu · ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems · 2009
Emerging critical issues for flash-memory storage systems, especially with regard to implementation within many embedded systems, are the programmed I/O nature of data transfers and their energy-efficient nature. We propose an I/O request mechanism in the Memory-Technology-Device (MTD) layer to exploit the programmed I/O-based data transfers for flash-memory storage systems. We propose to revise the waiting function in the Memory-Technology-Device (MTD) layer to relieve the microprocessor from busy-waiting, in order to make more CPU cycles available for other tasks. An energy-efficient mechanism based on the I/O request mechanism is also presented for multi-bank flash-memory storage systems, which particularly focuses on switching the power state of each flash-memory bank. We demonstrate that the energy-efficient I/O request mechanism not only saves more CPU cycles to execute other tasks, but also reduces the energy consumption of flash-memory, based on experiments incorporating realistic system workloads.