A flash compression layer for SmartMedia card systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on consumer electronics Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 192 - 197
• Main Authors: Yim, Keun Soo, Bahn, Hyokyung, Koh, Kern
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.02.2004; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Bandwidth; Computer science; Computer science education; Data compression; Delay; Educational programs; Educational technology; Engineering management; Flash memory; Virtual prototyping
• ISSN: 0098-3063; 1558-4127
• DOI: 10.1109/TCE.2004.1277861

Flash memory based SmartMedia card is becoming increasingly popular as data storage for mobile consumer electronics. Since flash memory is an order of magnitude more expensive than magnetic disks, data compression can be effectively used in managing flash memory based storage systems. However, compressed data management in flash memory is challenging because it only supports page-based I/Os. For example, when the size of compressed data is smaller than the page size, internal fragmentation occurs and this degrades the effectiveness of compression seriously. In this paper, we developed a flash compression layer (FCL) for the SmartMedia card systems. FCL stores several small compressed pages into one physical page by using a write buffer. Based on prototype implementation and simulation studies, we show that the proposed system offers the storage of flash memory more than 140% of its original size and expands the write bandwidth significantly.