FlashBench: A workbench for a rapid development of flash-based storage devices

As the cell size of NAND flash memory is shrinking, its physical characteristics such as performance and lifetime are significantly degraded. As effective solutions of overcoming such poor physical characteristics, more cross-layer system-level approaches (such as compression and deduplication techniques) are expected to be developed. These system-level techniques typically employ intelligent software algorithms supported by specialized hardware accelerators. Using hardware accelerators combined with sophisticated software algorithms greatly increases the design complexity of flash-based storage devices. However, existing storage design environments are not adequate enough to handle this increased design complexity in a timely and efficient manner. To address this new challenge, we propose a novel storage development environment, called FlashBench, that helps developers to build high-complexity storage solutions quickly. FlashBench is designed to provide a generic framework for the rapid development and validation of storage software/hardware algorithms by supporting multi-level design environments, specifically optimized for seamless hardware/software cross-layer integrations. Our case study demonstrates that FlashBench enables developers to implement high-complexity flash devices with specialized optimization functions in a shorter development time over traditional design environments.