Designing Hybrid HDD using SLC/MLC combined Flash Memory
Seong-Cheol Hong, Dongkun Shin · 2010
Recently, flash memory-based non-volatile cache (NVC) is emerging as an effective solution to enhance both I/O performance and energy consumption of storage systems. To get significant performance and energy gains by NVC, it would be better to use multi-level-cell (MLC) flash memories since it can provide a large capacity of NVC with low cost. However, the number of available program/erase cycles of MLC flash memory is smaller than that of single-level-cell (SLC) flash memory limiting the lifespan of NVC. To overcome such a limitation, SLC/MLC combined flash memory is a promising solution for NVC. In this paper, we propose an effective management scheme for heterogeneous SLC and MLC regions of the combined flash memory.