Midas Touch: Invalid-Data Assisted Reliability and Performance Boost for 3d High-Density Flash

High-density 3D NAND flash like QLC (Quad-Level Cell) is prevailing in providing large capacities for data-intensive applications. Because of the structure limitation, a two-step programming with a specific sequence is adopted in 3D QLC flash, where data could become invalid between the two programming steps. This is called invalid programming, as the second-step programming is conducted on partially-invalid wordlines (WLs). By exploiting this phenomenon, this work proposes invalid-data assisted strategies for performance and reliability boosting of valid data in 3D QLC-based flash storage systems. We first propose a high-efficiency re-programming (RP) scheme to reprogram the valid data and a high-reliability not-programming (NP) scheme to program data on the partially-invalid WLs. An adaptive data allocation (ADA) strategy for data management between the SLC and QLC regions is further introduced to reduce the occurrence of invalid programming. The simulator-based experiments show the proposed RP scheme combined with ADA can reduce the execution time for programming by 13.51%, on average. Through real-device evaluations, we present that the NP scheme can reduce the bit error rate of NP-programmed data by 32.8% of the worst page type, thus improving overall reliability, which translates to 12% reduction in refreshing overheads and 30% lifetime extension, on average. Besides, the NP scheme with ADA averagely reduces energy consumption by 4.8%.