• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• 제12권3호
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• pp.181-185
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• 2014

The lifetime of a solid-state drive (SSD) is limited because of the number of program and erase cycles allowed on its NAND flash blocks. Data cannot be overwritten in an SSD, leading to an out-of-place update every time the data are modified. This result in two copies of the data: the original copy and a modified copy. This phenomenon is known as write amplification and adversely affects the endurance of the memory. In this study, we address the issue of reducing wear leveling through efficient handling of write requests. This results in even wearing of all the blocks, thereby increasing the endurance period. The focus of our work is to logically divert the write requests, which are concentrated to limited blocks, to the less-worn blocks and then measure the maximum number of write requests that the memory can handle. A memory without the proposed algorithm wears out prematurely as compared to that with the algorithm. The main feature of the proposed algorithm is to delay out-of-place updates till the threshold is reached, which results in a low overhead. Further, the algorithm increases endurance by a factor of the threshold level multiplied by the number of blocks in the memory.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• 제16권3호
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• pp.330-338
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• 2016

Phase change memory (PCM) has been studied as an emerging memory technology for last-level cache (LLC) due to its extremely low leakage. However, it consumes high levels of energy in updating cells and its write endurance is limited. To relieve the write pressure of LLC, we propose a delta value indicator (DVI) by employing a small cache which stores the difference between the value currently stored and the value newly loaded. Since the write energy consumption of the small cache is less than the LLC, the energy consumption is reduced by access to the small cache instead of the LLC. In addition, the lifetime of the LLC is further extended because the number of write accesses to the LLC is decreased. To this end, a delta value indicator and controlling circuits are inserted into the LLC. The simulation results show a 26.8% saving of dynamic energy consumption and a 31.7% lifetime extension compared to a state-of-the-art scheme for PCM.

• 대한임베디드공학회논문지
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.79-86
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• 2019

For decades, in-memory data structures have been designed for DRAM-based main memory that provides symmetric read/write performances and has no limited write endurance. However, such data structures provide sub-optimal performance for NVM as it has different characteristics to DRAM. With this motivation, we rethink a conventional red-black tree in terms of its efficacy under NVM settings. The original red-black tree constantly rebalances sub-trees so as to export fast access time over dataset, but it inevitably increases the write traffic, adversely affecting the performance for NVM with a long write latency and limited endurance. To resolve this problem, we present a variant of the red-black tree called a hierarchical balanced binary search tree. The proposed structure maintains multiple keys in a single node so as to amortize the rebalancing cost. The performance study reveals that the proposed hierarchical binary search tree effectively reduces the write traffic by effectively reaping the high capacity of NVM.

• 대한임베디드공학회논문지
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.87-95
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• 2016

Nonvolatile memory (NVM) is being considered as an alternative of traditional memory devices such as SRAM and DRAM, which suffer from various limitations due to the technology scaling of modern integrated circuits. Although NVMs have advantages including nonvolatility, low leakage current, and high density, their inferior write performance in terms of energy and endurance becomes a major challenge to the successful design of NVM-based memory systems. In order to overcome the aforementioned drawback of the NVM, extensive research is required to develop energy- and endurance-aware optimization techniques for NVM-based memory systems. However, researchers have experienced difficulty in finding a suitable simulation tool to prototype and evaluate new NVM optimization schemes because existing simulation tools do not consider the feature of NVM devices. In this article, we introduce a NVM-based cache simulator to support rapid prototyping and evaluation of NVM-based caches, as well as energy- and endurance-aware NVM cache optimization schemes. We demonstrate that the proposed NVM cache simulator can easily prototype PRAM cache and PRAM+STT-RAM hybrid cache as well as evaluate various write traffic reduction schemes and wear leveling schemes.

• 반도체디스플레이기술학회지
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• 제21권4호
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• pp.86-91
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• 2022

Cache bypassing is a scheme to prevent unnecessary cache blocks from occupying the capacity of the cache for avoiding cache contamination. This method is introduced to alleviate the problems of non-volatile memories (NVMs)-based memory system. However, the prior works have been studied without considering wear-out attack. Malicious writing to a small area in NVMs leads to the failure of the system due to the limited write endurance of NVMs. This paper proposes a novel scheme to prolong the lifetime with higher resistance for the wear-out attack. First, the memory reference pattern is found by modified reuse distance calculation for each cache block. If a cache block is determined as the target of the attack, it is forwarded to higher level cache or main memory without updating the NVM-based cache. The experimental results show that the write endurance is improved by 14% on average and 36% on maximum.

• 한국전기전자재료학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국전기전자재료학회 1998년도 추계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.145-150
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• 1998

8$\times$8 bit scaled SONOSFET NAND type flash EEPROM that shows better characteristics on cell density and endurance than NOR type have been designed and its electrical characteristics are verified with computer aided simulation. For the simulation, the spice model parameter was extracted from the sealed down SONOSFET that was fabricated by $1.5mutextrm{m}$ topological design rule. To improve the endurance of the device, the EEPROM design to have modified Fowler-Nordheim tunneling through the whole channel area in Write/Erase operation. As a result, it operates Write/Erase operation at low current, and has been proven Its good endurance. The NAND type flash EEPROM, which has upper limit of V$_{th}$, has the upper limit of V$_{th}$ as 4.5V. It is better than that of floating gate as 4V. And a EEPROM using the SONOSFET without scaling (65$\AA$-l65$\AA$-35$\AA$), was also designed and its characteristics have been compared. It has more possibliity of error from the V$_{th}$ upper limit as 4V, and takes more time for Read operation due to low current. As a consequence, it is proven that scaled down SONOSFET is more pertinent than existing floating gate or SONOSFET without scaling for the NAND type flash EEPROM.EPROM.

• 정보과학회 논문지
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• 제43권2호
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• pp.177-185
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• 2016

본 논문에서는 NVRAM과 DRAM으로 구성된 SSD의 쓰기 버퍼 구조 및 제안된 쓰기 버퍼 구조에 적합한 이중 쓰기 버퍼 알고리즘을 제안한다. 읽기/쓰기 작업이 혼합된 일반적인 워크로드에서 저장 장치의 성능을 향상시키기 위해서 읽기 작업에 의해 참조되는 페이지 또한 고려하였다. 그리고, NVRAM에 저장되는 쓰기 작업에 의해 참조된 페이지를 효율적으로 관리하여 낸드 플래시 메모리에서 발생하는 삭제 연산의 횟수를 감소시켜 SSD의 수명을 연장하였다. 우리는 실험을 통해 제안하는 쓰기 버퍼 알고리즘이 버퍼 적중률을 최대 116.51% 향상시켰으며, 낸드 플래시 메모리에서의 삭제 연산의 횟수를 최대 56.66% 감소시킬 수 있었다.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• 제5권5호
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• pp.337-345
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• 2016

Recently, as the number of cores in computer systems has increased, the need for larger memory capacity has also increased. Unfortunately, dynamic random access memory (DRAM), popularly used as main memory for decades, now faces a scalability limitation. Phase change memory (PCM) is considered one of the strong alternatives to DRAM due to its advantages, such as high scalability, non-volatility, low idle power, and so on. However, since PCM suffers from short write endurance, direct use of PCM in main memory incurs a significant problem due to its short lifetime. To solve the lifetime limitation, many studies have focused on reducing the number of bit flips per write request. In this paper, we describe the PCM operating principles in detail and explore various bit flip reduction schemes. Also, we compare their performance in terms of bit reduction rate and lifetime improvement.

• 정보과학회 논문지
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• 제42권8호
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• pp.954-960
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• 2015

스토리지는 응용 프로그램의 성능에 가장 큰 영향을 주므로 가상화된 IoT 게이트웨이를 사용 한 홈 클라우드 환경에서 매우 중요하다. 스토리지의 성능 향상을 위해 SSD와 같은 고성능의 디스크를 캐시로 사용해 왔으나 취약한 쓰기 성능과 제한된 셀 수명 문제로 인해 주로 읽기 전용 캐시로 사용하였다. 그러나 사용자 응용의 성능 향상을 위해서는 읽기 작업뿐만 아니라 쓰기 작업의 성능도 매우 중요하다. 본 논문은 이러한 환경에서 읽기 및 쓰기에 모두 사용 가능한 새로운 SSD 캐시 기법을 제안한다. 실험을 통해 본 캐시 기법이 응용 프로그램의 임의 쓰기 작업을 순차적 동작으로 변환시켜 성능 향상을 이룰 수 있음을 확인하였다.

• 대한임베디드공학회논문지
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• 제13권5호
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• pp.245-252
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• 2018

Non-volatile RAM devices have been increasingly viewed as an alternative of DRAM main memory system. However some technologies including phase-change memory (PCM) are still suffering from relatively poor write performance as well as limited endurance. In this paper, we introduce a proactive last-level cache management to efficiently hide a low write performance of non-volatile main memory systems. The proposed method significantly reduces the cache miss penalty by proactively evicting the part of cachelines when the non-volatile main memory system is in idle state. Our trace-driven simulation demonstrates 24% performance enhancement, compared with a conventional LRU cache management, on the average.