A Non-Volatile Memory Management Scheme for Automotive Electronic Control Units

Recently, the number of automotive electrical and electronic system has been increased due to growth of the requirements for safety and convenience for drivers and passengers. In most cases, the data for either user or system to be used in runtime should be stored on internal or external nonvolatile memory. However, the non-volatile memory has a constraint with write limitation. The limit causes fatal accidents or unexpected results. In this paper, we proposed a management algorithm for using none-volatile memory to prolong the writing access times. Our proposal uses an algorithm which swaps a frequently modified block for a least modified block. In the resorting to our experimental results, the proposed scheme can extend the lifetime of non-volatile memory about 1.78 to 2.56 times.