A Real-Time Dependable Flash Storage System

One of the limitations of flash memory in real-time and high dependability systems is its need for garbage collection, resulting in performance degradation due to non-deterministic response times. Recent work has presented RAID architectures for solid state storage systems. These RAID architectures increase the dependability from a data storage perspective but they do not provide application level dependability when real-time response times are required. In this study we present a garbage collection aware Flash Translation Layer that offers guaranteed access time to a solid state RAID array by managing incoming requests and preventing them from being blocked by ongoing garbage collection. We present a novel serial technique with a dynamic page allocation mechanism that eliminates non-deterministic behaviours of the garbage collectors in the array. The result is real-time access guarantees that maintain the data dependability enhancements using a run time parity migration technique. The mechanisms are evaluated using a trace driven simulator and a number of synthetic and realistic traces. Simulation results indicate that the garbage collection aware techniques offer improved upper bound response times for I/O requests of up to 73% compared to an existing mechanism, without disturbing the data dependability at the storage level. Traces dominated by random writes exhibit similarly significant enhancements.