Simplifying and Accelerating NOR Flash I/O Stack for RAM-Restricted Microcontrollers
Hao Huang, Yanqi Pan, Wen Xia, Xiangyu Zou, Darong Yang, Liang Shi, Hongwei Du · 2025
NOR flash has been increasingly popular for RAM-restricted microcontrollers due to its small package, high reliability, etc. To satisfy RAM restrictions, existing NOR flash file systems migrate their functionalities, i.e., block-level data organization and wear leveling (WL), from RAM to NOR flash. However, such fine-grained block-level management introduces frequent index updates and NOR flash scanning, leading to severe I/O amplification, which further deteriorates as they are decoupled in existing NOR flash file systems.