Flash Based Storage in Embedded Systems
Abstract
NAND Flash memories gained a solid foothold in the embedded systems domain due to its attractive characteristics in terms of size, weight, shock resistance, power consumption, and data throughput. Moreover, flash memories tend to be less confined to the embedded domain, as it can be observed through the market explosion of flash-based storage systems (average growth of the NVRAM is reported to be about 69% up to 2015). In this chapter we focus on NAND flash memory NVRAM. After a global presentation of its architecture and very specific constraints, we describe throughout some examples the different ways to manage flash memories in embedded systems which are 1) the use of a hardware Flash Translation layer (FTL), or 2) a dedicated Flash File System (FFS) software support implemented within the embedded operating system kernel