Cleaning Process with Efficient Allocation Scheme Improves Flash Memory Performance

Flash memory is a non-volatile storage device that offers lots of superiority features. However, it has two characteristics namely: 1) Out-place updating and 2) Cleaning process that affects its performance as an efficient storage sub-system. Both characteristics influence the access time requirement in enabling the continuity of data storing and updating. In this paper, we propose an efficient data allocation scheme that takes into account the data popularity as the main indicator in making the allocation decision. Then, we unveil the importance of the allocation scheme in the block cleaning algorithm process. The simulation studies have shown that the integration between the block cleaning algorithm and the proposed data allocation scheme has significant impact on the cleaning process performance in terms of the number of block erasure operation and the number of active block requirements.