Exploiting non-volatile RAM to enhance flash file system performance

Non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) such as PRAM (Phase-change RAM), FeRAM (Ferroelectric RAM), and MRAM (Magnetoresistive RAM) has characteristics of both non-volatile storage and random access memory (RAM). These forms of NVRAM are currently being developed by major semiconductor companies and are expected to be an everyday component in the near future. The advent of NVRAM may possibly bring about drastic changes to the system software landscape. In this work, we develop a new Flash memory based file system that exploits NVRAM in order to improve system performance. Specifically, we discuss the initial design and implementation of a file system that stores all metadata in NVRAM, while storing all file data in Flash memory. In so doing, we make two contributions in this work. First, we present a model that analyzes the amount of NVRAM that is needed for specific Flash memory storage capacity. Experimentally, we verify that this model represents the exact NVRAM usage in the realistic environment...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: EMSOFT
• Authors: In Hwan Doh, Jongmoo Choi, Donghee Lee, Sam H. Noh
• Keywords: EMSOFT 2007, File System, Flash Memory, Memory Based File