Reliability and performance enhancement technique for SSD array storage system using RAID mechanism

Recently solid state drive (SSD) based on NAND flash memory chips becomes popular in the consumer electronics market because it is tough on shock and its I/O performance is better than that of conventional hard disk drive. However, as the density of the semiconductor grows higher, the distance between its wires narrows down, their interferences are frequently occurred, and the bit error rate of semiconductor increases. Such frequent error occurrence and short life cycle in NAND flash memory reduce the reliability of SSD. In this paper, we present reliability and performance enhancement technique on new RAID system based on SSD. First, we analyze the existing RAID mechanism in the environment of SSD array and then develop a new RAID methodology adaptable to SSD array storage system. Via trace-driven simulation, we evaluated the performance of our new optimized SSD array storage using RAID mechanism. The proposed method enhances the reliability of SSD array 2% higher than that of existing RAID system and improves the I/O performance of SSD array 28% higher than that of existing RAID system.