Map cache management using dual granularity for mobile storage systems

Abstract

NAND flash memories have been used in many mobile consumer devices as storage media because they are small, fast, shock-resistant, and energy-efficient. However, the flash storage systems based on these flash devices need a special software layer, the FTL, to translate logical addresses from a host system to physical addresses in NAND flash memories. Recently, the flash storage systems in mobile devices tend to employ a page-level mapping scheme as they are required to yield higher access bandwidth. Unlike common SSDs, which often keep the majority of mapping information in fast but volatile DRAM, the flash storage systems in mobile consumer devices keep only a limited subset of mapping information in a small-sized SRAM due to the restrictions in size, cost, and power consumption. For this reason, many cache management schemes proposed for SSDs may not be suitable for the flash storage systems in mobile consumer devices, though most map cache management schemes used in mobile storage are basically designed for SSD. This paper proposes a novel cache management scheme targeting mobile consumer devices. The proposed scheme uses different management granularities in allocating and evacuating cache space. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme improves map cache performance by up to 36% compared to the existing cache management techniques.