Software Based NAND Flash Management Techniques

Flash memory is rapidly becoming the storage medium of choice in embedded applications. It provides non-volatile storage with low-power consumption, ruggedness, small access times, small physical dimensions, light weight, and cost effectiveness. However, there are a number of difficulties associated with using flash for applications where the data stored in the non-volatile memory changes frequently, as is the case with PDAs, USB flash drives, MP3 players, digital camera media cards, and cell phone memory cards. This paper discusses these difficulties and possible techniques and solutions. This paper also gives a brief overview of an efficient flash translation layer for current very large page NAND flash.