Special Issues in Flash

While flash memory has been widely adopted in the implementations of various storage systems, it recently receives a lot of attention in various system-component designs. With the unique characteristics of flash memory, it is highly challenging in the designs of management software, especially when reliability and cost management become major concerns. In this paper, popular implementations of the management software will be summarized, and the behavior analysis of flash-memory storage systems will then be addressed. Challenge issues for current and future implementations, especially on reliability and filesystem considerations, and some potential solutions will be presented.