Reorganizing Data Blocks in Flash Memory by Program Translation

Due to the portability, low power consumption and robustness, flash memory is one of the popular storage devices for small electronic equipments like smart phones and PMPs (Portable multimedia players). However, it suffers from performance bottlenecks caused by asymmetric speed between read and write operations. A lot of previous researches focused on improving address mapping schemes in FTL (Flash Translation Layer) to reduce the number of write operations which are more expensive, but they rarely consider semantic factors like data file formats and detailed sequence of write operations. In this paper we suggest a new performance enhancement technique for flash memory, where a file format is reorganized to segregate read-only data and writable data. Since converting every standardized data format to a new one is unrealistic, we use static analysis and program translation--the transformed programs keep the writable data in the same block, rather than allowing it to be scattered over a larger number of blocks mixed with read-only data.