From Raw Flash to Flash-Based SSDs
Explore the transformation from raw flash chips into flash-based SSDs by understanding the internal components such as flash chips, volatile memory, and control logic. Learn how the flash translation layer manages read/write operations, enhances performance with parallelism and write amplification reduction, and ensures reliability through wear leveling and program sequencing.
We'll cover the following...
Given our basic understanding of flash chips, we now face our next task: how to turn a basic set of flash chips into something that looks like a typical storage device. The standard storage interface is a simple block-based one, where blocks (sectors) of size 512 bytes (or larger) can be read or written, given a block address. The task of the flash-based SSD is to provide that standard block interface atop the raw flash chips inside it.
What does an SSD contain
Internally, an SSD consists of some number of flash chips (for persistent storage). An SSD also contains some amount of volatile (i.e., non-persistent) memory (e.g., SRAM). Such memory is useful for ...