Design of a multichannel NAND Flash memory controller for efficient utilization of bandwidth in SSDs

Abstract

Flash memory is a non-volatile memory which can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. Its small physical size, low power consumption, high shock resistance and high performance have made NAND Flash memory to replace the magnetic disk drives in many systems. Mainly two types of standard Flash memory structure are present. Because of the difference in the structure of interconnection of the memory cells, NOR Flash is known for its random access capability, while the NAND Flash is known for its compact size. NAND Flash based solid state drives are used as a replacement for the Hard disk drives due to its high read and write speed, large density memory erasable and non-volatility. In this paper we propose the design of a Multichannel NAND Flash Memory Controller. This controller design exploits the parallelism of multiple flash chip and executes parallel requests simultaneously by the crossbar switch operation. So this design will improve the bandwidth utilization and the speed of accessing. The controller builds its own instruction set and command to manage a Flash memory chip efficiently.