TY - GEN
T1 - When do WOM codes improve the erasure factor in flash memories?
AU - Yaakobi, Eitan
AU - Yucovich, Alexander
AU - Maor, Gal
AU - Yadgar, Gala
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2015 IEEE.
PY - 2015/9/28
Y1 - 2015/9/28
N2 - Flash memory is a write-once medium in which re-programming cells requires first erasing the block that contains them. The lifetime of the flash is a function of the number of block erasures and can be as small as several thousands. To reduce the number of block erasures, pages, which are the smallest write unit, are rewritten out-of-place in the memory. A Write-once memory (WOM) code is a coding scheme which enables to write multiple times to the block before an erasure. However, these codes come with significant rate loss. For example, the rate for writing twice (with the same rate) is at most 0.77. In this paper, we study WOM codes and their tradeoff between rate loss and reduction in the number of block erasures, when pages are written uniformly at random. First, we introduce a new measure, called erasure factor, that reflects both the number of block erasures and the amount of data that can be written on each block. A key point in our analysis is that this tradeoff depends upon the specific implementation of WOM codes in the memory. We consider two systems that use WOM codes; a conventional scheme that was commonly used, and a new recent design that preserves the overall storage capacity. While the first system can improve the erasure factor only when the storage rate is at most 0.6442, we show that the second scheme always improves this figure of merit.
AB - Flash memory is a write-once medium in which re-programming cells requires first erasing the block that contains them. The lifetime of the flash is a function of the number of block erasures and can be as small as several thousands. To reduce the number of block erasures, pages, which are the smallest write unit, are rewritten out-of-place in the memory. A Write-once memory (WOM) code is a coding scheme which enables to write multiple times to the block before an erasure. However, these codes come with significant rate loss. For example, the rate for writing twice (with the same rate) is at most 0.77. In this paper, we study WOM codes and their tradeoff between rate loss and reduction in the number of block erasures, when pages are written uniformly at random. First, we introduce a new measure, called erasure factor, that reflects both the number of block erasures and the amount of data that can be written on each block. A key point in our analysis is that this tradeoff depends upon the specific implementation of WOM codes in the memory. We consider two systems that use WOM codes; a conventional scheme that was commonly used, and a new recent design that preserves the overall storage capacity. While the first system can improve the erasure factor only when the storage rate is at most 0.6442, we show that the second scheme always improves this figure of merit.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84969802553&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1109/ISIT.2015.7282824
DO - https://doi.org/10.1109/ISIT.2015.7282824
M3 - منشور من مؤتمر
T3 - IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - Proceedings
SP - 2091
EP - 2095
BT - Proceedings - 2015 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2015
T2 - IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2015
Y2 - 14 June 2015 through 19 June 2015
ER -