CAREER: Architectural Support for Integrating NAND Flash Solid State Disks into Enterprise-Class Storage Systems

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).With recent advances in capacity, bandwidth, and durability, NAND flash memory has been successfully employed in mobile devices like PDAs and laptops and it is starting to replace hard disks in desktop systems. Integrating NAND flash memory into server domain applications, which normally demands a high level of data reliability and exceptional random I/O performance, however, is much more challenging because NAND flash memory exhibits relatively poor random write performance and insufficient reliability due to limited erasure cycles. To address these problems, an architectural support for flash SSD must be devised in order to fundamentally boost its performance and longevity by a software/hardware combined effort. In this project, we will develop a novel flash disk storage architecture that exploits the addition of RAM and dedicated software schemes to incorporate flash SSDs into enterprise-class storage systems. We plan to implement a flash disk array prototype and deploy it in real-world data-intensive application. In addition, we will develop new software techniques such as a double-buffer write ordering management scheme and an inter-disk wear-leveling technique. This project will contribute to energy conservation, performance enhancement, data management, and reliability technology for enterprise-class storage systems by developing the flash disk array storage architecture, accompanied by an array of new software schemes. This project will also promote teaching, learning, an training by exposing both undergraduate and underrepresented students to technological and scientific underpinnings in the field of server-class storage systems.