A Reliable Non-volatile Memory System: Exploiting File-System Characteristics

Flash memory has become a popular non-volatile memory technology and is widely used in mobile electronics devices and consumer applications. A flash-memory device is different from typical hard-disk devices and requires sophisticated management to improve the lifetime and the performance. As a result, when a file system is executed on these flash-memory devices, the endurance problem will be an important issue. This is because flash memory could suffer from access errors due to unevenly erase operations on specific locations. In this paper, we will propose a reliable non-volatile memory system by exploiting file-system characteristics. The proposed method can help quick identification of hot and cold files and evenly distribute erase operations over flash-memory devices.When compared to other methods, the proposed method can provide reliable endurance and a more practical solution according to the experimental results.