IEICE Transactions on Electronics
Online ISSN : 1745-1353
Print ISSN : 0916-8524
Special Section on Solid-State Circuit Design — Architecture, Circuit, Device and Design Methodology
Workload-Based Co-Design of Non-Volatile Cache Algorithm and Storage Class Memory Specifications for Storage Class Memory/NAND Flash Hybrid SSDs
Tomoaki YAMADAChihiro MATSUIKen TAKEUCHI
Author information
JOURNAL RESTRICTED ACCESS

2017 Volume E100.C Issue 4 Pages 373-381

Details
Abstract

In order to realize solid-state drives (SSDs) with high performance, low energy consumption and high reliability, storage class memory (SCM)/multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash hybrid SSD has been proposed. Algorithm of the hybrid SSD should be designed according to SCM specifications and workload characteristics. In this paper, SCMs are used as non-volatile cache. Cache operation guidelines and optimal SCM specifications for the hybrid SSD are provided for various workload characteristics. Three kinds of non-volatile cache operation for the hybrid SSD are discussed: i) write cache, ii) read-write cache without space control (RW cache) and iii) read-write cache with space control (RW cache w/ SC). SSD workloads are categorized into eight according to read/write ratio, access frequency and access data size. From evaluation result, the write cache algorithm is suitable for write-intensive workloads and read-cold-sequential workloads, while the RW cache algorithm is suitable for read-cold-random workloads to achieve the highest performance of the hybrid SSD. In contrast, as for read-hot-random workloads, write cache is appropriate when the SCM capacity is less than 3% of the NAND flash capacity. On the other hand, RW cache should be used in case that SCM capacity is more than 5% of NAND flash capacity. The effect of Memory-type SCM (M-SCM) and Storage-type SCM (S-SCM) on the hybrid SSD performance is also analyzed. The M-SCM latency is below 1 us (high speed) but the capacity is only 2% of the NAND flash capacity (small capacity). On the other hand, the S-SCM capacity is assumed to be 5% of the NAND flash capacity (large capacity) but S-SCM speed is larger than 1 us (low speed). If the additional SCM cost is limited to 20% of MLC NAND flash cost, up to 7-times and 8-times performance improvement are achieved in write-hot-random workload and read-hot-random workloads, respectively. Moreover, if the additional SCM cost is the same as MLC NAND flash cost, M-SCM/MLC NAND flash hybrid SSD achieves 24-times performance improvement.

Content from these authors
© 2017 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers
Previous article Next article
feedback
Top