• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.34 no.11
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• pp.599-609
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• 2007

Due to the restrictions of Flash memory such as overwrite limitation and write/erase operational unit differences, block cleaning is required in Flash memory based file systems and known as a key factor on the performance of file systems. In this paper, we identify three parameters, namely utilization, invalidity and uniformity, and analyze how the parameters affect the cost of block cleaning. The analysis show that as uniformity degrades, the cost of block cleaning increases drastically. To overcome this problem, we design a new modification-aware(MODA) page allocation scheme that strives to keep uniformity high by separating frequently-updating data from infrequently-updating data. Real implementation experiments conducted on an embedded system show that the MODA scheme can actually enhance uniformity of Flash memory, which consequently leads to reduce the cost of block cleaning with an average of 123%, compared to the traditional sequential allocation scheme that is used in YAFFS.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.272-284
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• 2010

Flash Memory differs from the hard disk, because it cannot be overwritten. Most of the flash memory file systems use not-in-place update mechanisms for the update. Flash memory file systems execute sometimes block cleaning process in order to make writable space while performing not-in-place update process. Block cleaning process collects the invalid pages and convert them into the free pages. Block cleaning process is a factor that affects directly on the performance of the flash memory. Thus this paper suggests the efficient page allocation method, which reduces block cleaning cost by minimizing the numbers of block that has valid and invalid pages at a time. The result of the simulation shows an increase in efficiency by reducing more block cleaning costs than the original YAFFS.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.13A no.5 s.102
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• pp.387-398
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• 2006

In this paper, we propose a new page allocation scheme for flash memory file system. The proposed scheme allocates pages by exploiting the concept of Purity, which is defined as the fraction of blocks where valid Pages and invalid Pages are coexisted. The Pity determines the cost of block cleaning, that is, the portion of pages to be copied and blocks to be erased for block cleaning. To enhance the purity, the scheme classifies hot-modified data and cold-modified data and allocates them into different blocks. The hot/cold classification is based on both static properties such as attribute of data and dynamic properties such as the frequency of modifications. We have implemented the proposed scheme in YAFFS and evaluated its performance on the embedded board equipped with 400MHz XScale CPU, 64MB SDRAM, and 64MB NAND flash memory. Performance measurements have shown that the proposed scheme can reduce block cleaning time by up to 15.4 seconds with an average of 7.8 seconds compared to the typical YAFFS. Also, the enhancement becomes bigger as the utilization of flash memory increases.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.627-635
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• 2016

When many processes issue write operations alternately on Log-structured File System (LFS), the created files can be fragmented on the file system layer although LFS sequentially allocates new blocks of each process. Unfortunately, this file fragmentation degrades read performance because it increases the number of block I/Os. Additionally, read-ahead operations which increase the number of data to request at a time exacerbates the performance degradation. In this paper, we suggest a new cleaning method on LFS that minimizes file fragmentation. During a cleaning process of LFS, our method sorts valid data blocks by inode numbers before copying the valid blocks to a new segment. This sorting re-locates fragmented blocks contiguously. Our cleaning method experimentally eliminates 60% of file fragmentation as compared to file fragmentation before cleaning. Consequently, our cleaning method improves sequential read throughput by 21% when read-ahead is applied.