Storage Device Zoning for Selective Runtime Erasure
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
The frequent performance of garbage collection (GC) operations on nonvolatile memory devices reduces the lifespan of storage devices due to the need to manage random access and the mismatch between logical and physical addresses, leading to inefficient zone cleaning and runtime zone reset operations that degrade performance and lifespan.
Innovation Solution
The method involves grouping memory blocks with continuous physical addresses into zones, allowing only sequential writes, and using write pointers to manage zones, determining invalid zones, and performing runtime zone resets only on zones exceeding a threshold based on the device's utilization rate to prevent unnecessary erase operations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If garbage collection operations are performed frequently to manage random access and address mapping, then storage device performance is maintained, but device lifespan is reduced due to excessive erase operations
Solution Approach 1:
The storage device is divided into multiple zones with different access patterns. Hot zones (first plurality of zones) handle random access operations while cold zones (second plurality of zones) handle sequential operations. This segmentation allows GC to be focused only on hot zones, reducing the total number of erase operations across the entire device while maintaining performance for active data.
Solution Approach 2:
Different zones are assigned different quality characteristics - hot zones are optimized for random access with full GC management, while cold zones are optimized for sequential access with minimal GC intervention. This local differentiation allows the system to maintain high performance where needed while minimizing wear overall by avoiding unnecessary GC operations on cold zones.
2Quantity of substance
If zone reset operations are performed on all invalid zones to free up storage space, then storage space utilization is improved, but unnecessary erase operations on unused blocks reduce device lifespan
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of performing zone reset operations on all invalid zones, the system applies partial action by selectively resetting only those zones that contain valid data or are actively used. Zones that are completely invalid and unused are left alone, avoiding unnecessary erase operations while still freeing sufficient space to maintain storage utilization above the threshold.
Solution Approach 2:
The system monitors its own storage utilization and automatically triggers selective zone reset operations only when necessary. By using write pointers to track actual data locations, the system can identify which zones truly need resetting versus which ones can remain untouched, enabling self-service space management without excessive wear.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of controlling a storage device includes grouping one or more memory blocks in which physical addresses are continuous, among a plurality of memory blocks included in the device, generating a plurality of zones by mapping continuous physical addresses to continuous logical addresses, controlling sequential write operations using write pointers indicating a logical address of a region in which data is to be written in a next order in each of the plurality of zones, determining invalid zones in which all stored data is invalid data, among the plurality of zones, determining a utilization rate of a storage space of the storage device, determining a write pointer threshold based on the utilization rate, determining a target zone in which a write pointer value is greater than the write pointer threshold, among the invalid zones, and controlling the storage device to erase all memory blocks included in the target zone.