• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.2139-2151
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• 2014

Embedded system testing, especially long-term reliability testing, of flash memory solutions such as embedded multi-media card, secure digital card and solid-state drive involves strategic decision making related to test sample size to achieve high test coverage. The test sample size is the number of flash memory devices used in a test. Earlier, there were physical limitations on the testing period and the number of test devices that could be used. Hence, decisions regarding the sample size depended on the experience of human testers owing to the absence of well-defined standards. Moreover, a lack of understanding of the importance of the sample size resulted in field defects due to unexpected user scenarios. In worst cases, users finally detected these defects after several years. In this paper, we propose that a large number of potential field defects can be detected if an adequately large test sample size is used to target weak features during long-term reliability testing of flash memory solutions. In general, a larger test sample size yields better results. However, owing to the limited availability of physical resources, there is a limit on the test sample size that can be used. In this paper, we address this problem by proposing a self-adaptive reliability testing scheme to decide the sample size for effective long-term reliability testing.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.41-49
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• 2010

Being popularized the use of portable entertainment/information devices, the demand on flash memory has been also increased radically. In general, flash memory reveals various error patterns by the devices it is mounted, and thus the memory makers are trying to minimize error ratio in the final process through not only the electric test but also the data integrity test under the same condition as real application devices. This process is called an application-level memory test. Though currently various flash memory testing devices have been used in the production lines, most of the works related to memory test depend on the sensual abilities of human testers. In case of testing the flash memory for MP3 devices, the human testers are checking if the memory has some errors by hearing the audio played on the memory testing device. The memory testing process like this has become a bottleneck in the flash memory production line. In this paper, we propose an audio comparison technique to support the efficient flash memory test for MP3 devices. The technique proposed in this paper compares the variance change rate between the source binary file and the decoded analog signal and checks automatically if the memory errors are occurred or not.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.147-155
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• 2017

A new endurance test-pattern generation on NAND-flash memory is proposed to improve test cost. We mainly focus on the correlation between the data-pattern and the device error-rate during endurance testing. The novelty is the development of testing method using quasi-random pattern based on device architectures in order to increase the test efficiency during time-consuming endurance testing. It has been proven by the experiments using the commercial 32 nm NAND flash-memory. Using the proposed method, the error-rate increases up to 18.6% compared to that of the conventional method which uses pseudo-random pattern. Endurance testing time using the proposed quasi-random pattern is faster than that of using the conventional pseudo-random pattern since it is possible to reach the target error rate quickly using the proposed one. Accordingly, the proposed method provides more low-cost testing solutions compared to the previous pseudo-random testing patterns.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.26-33
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• 2012

As the flash memory has increased the market share of data storage in imbedded system and occupied the most of area in a system, It has a profound impact on system reliability. Flash memory is divided NOR/NAND-type according to the cell array structure, and is classified as SLC(Single Level Cell)/MLC(Multi Level Cell) according to reference voltage. Although NAND-type flash memory is slower than NOR-type, but it has large capacity and low cost. Also, By the effect of demanding mobile market, MLC NAND-type is widely adopted for the purpose of the multimedia data storage. Accordingly, Importance of fault detection algorithm is increasing to ensure MLC NAND-type flash memory reliability. There are many researches about the testing algorithm used from traditional RAM to SLC flash memory and it detected a lot of errors. But the case of MLC flash memory, testing for fault detection, there was not much attempt. So, In this paper, Extend SLC NAND-type flash memory fault detection algorithm for testing MLC NAND-type flash memory and try to reduce these differences.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.36-45
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• 2002

This paper introduces the design and implementation of a flash memory simulator to emulate a real flash memory. Since this simulator provides exact execution time information and parameter testing functions as well as the type, total capacity, block size, and page size of flash memory, it can be used as a real flash memory as viewed by the operating system. Furthermore, the simulator provides time logging functions of the internal routines of the flash memory management software allowing the monitoring of bottlenecks within the software. Finally, we show the performance measurements of applications under the Linux operating systems on both the simulator and a test board verifying the simulator's use as a replacement for real flash memory.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.69-81
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• 2008

The density of Memory has been increased by great challenge for memory technology, so elements of memory become smaller than before and the sensitivity to faults increases. As a result of these changes, memory testing becomes more complex. The number of storage elements is increased per chip, and the cost of test becomes more remarkable as the cost per transistor drops. Proposed design doesn't need to control from outside environment, because it integrates into memory. The proposed scheme supports the various memory testing algorithms. Consequently, the proposed one is more efficient in terms of test cost and test data to be applied. Moreover, we proposed a reallocation algorithm for faulty memory parts. It has an efficient reallocation scheme with row and column redundant memory. Previous reallocation information is obtained from faulty memory every each tests. However proposed scheme avoids to this problem. because onetime test result from reallocation information can save to flash memory. In this paper, a reallocation scheme has been increased efficiency because of using flash memory.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.836-840
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• 2009

Many researchers have studied flash memory in order to replace hard disk storages. Many FTL algorithms have been proposed to overcome physical constraints of flash memory such as erase-before-write, wear leveling, and poor write performance. Therefore, these constraints should be considered for testing FTL algorithms and the performance evaluation of flash memory. As doing the experiments, we suffer from several problems with costs and settings in experimental configuration. When we, for example, replay the traces of Oracle to evaluate the I/O performance with flash memory, it is hard to extract exact traces of I/O operations in Oracle. Since there are only write operations in the log, it is impossible to gather read operations. In MySQL and SQLite, we can gather the read operations by changing I/O functions in the source codes. But it is not easy to search for the exact points about I/O and even if we can find out the points, we might get wrong results depending on how we modify source codes to get I/O traces. The FlaSim proposed in this paper removes the difficulties when we evaluate the performance of FTL algorithms and flash memory. Our Linux drivers emulate the flash memory as a hard disk. And we can easily obtain the usage statistics of flash memory such as the number of write, read, and erase operations. The FlaSim can be gracefully extended to support the additional modules implemented by novel algorithms and ideas. In this paper, we describe the structure of FTL emulator, development tools and operating methods. We expect this emulator to be helpful for many experiments and research with flash memory.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.44 no.6 s.360
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• pp.34-41
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• 2007

We popose a programmed on-line to FSM-based Programmable BIST(Buit-In Self-Test) with selected command, to select a test algorithm from a predetermined set of algorithms that are built in the Flash memory BIST. Thus, the proposed scheme greatly simplifies the testing process. Besides, the proposed FSM-based Programmable BIST is more efficient in terms of circuit size and test data to be applied, and it requires less time to configure the Flash memory BIST. We also will develop a programmable Flash memory BIST generator that automatically produces Verilog code of the proposed BIST architecture for a given set of test algorithms. If experiment the proposed method, the proposed method will achieves a good flexibility with smaller circuit size compared with previous methods.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.103-109
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• 2015

This paper presents the development of a ROM writer for shmoo test of a flash memory integrated into the MCU(Micro Controller Unit). A shmoo test is a graphical display of the response of a component or system varying over a range of conditions and inputs. Often used to represent the results of the testing of complex electronic systems such as computers or integrated circuits such as DRAMs, ASICs or microprocessors. A shmoo test and data write time(32k) of the development ROM writer is 6.4 seconds, which was improved by about 20% compared to the rate of the currently used ROM writer.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.197-204
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• 2002

DRAM, SRAM, and FLASH memory are three major memory devices currently used in most electronic applications. But, they have very distinct attributes, therefore, each memory could be used only for limited applications. MRAM (Magneto-resistive Random Access Memory) is a promising candidate for a universal memory that meets all application needs with non-volatile, fast operational speed, and low power consumption. The simplest architecture of MRAM cell is a series of MTJ (Magnetic Tunnel Junction) as a data storage part and MOS transistor as a data selection part. To be a commercially competitive memory device, scalability is an important factor as well. This paper is testing the actual electrical parameters and the scaling factors to limit MRAM technology in the semiconductor based memory device by an actual integration of MRAM core cell. Electrical tuning of MOS/MTJ, and control of resistance are important factors for data sensing, and control of magnetic switching for data writing.