Cost-efficient memory architecture design of NAND flash memory embedded systems

NAND flash memory has become an Indispensable component in embedded systems because of its versatile features such as nonvolatility, solid-state reliability, low cost and high density. Even though NAND flash memory gains popularity as data storage, it also can be exploited as code memory for XIP (execute-in-place). We present a cost-efficient memory architecture, which incorporates NAND flash memory into an existing memory hierarchy for code execution. The usefulness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with real embedded workloads on a real hardware prototyping board.