Why is wear levelling required for SSDs?

Database System Concepts
7th Edition
ISBN:9780078022159
Author:Abraham Silberschatz Professor, Henry F. Korth, S. Sudarshan
Publisher:Abraham Silberschatz Professor, Henry F. Korth, S. Sudarshan
Chapter1: Introduction
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**Why is wear leveling required for SSDs?**

Wear leveling is a technique used in solid-state drives (SSDs) to prolong their lifespan. Since SSDs have a limited number of write and erase cycles, wear leveling ensures that the memory cells are used evenly. This prevents certain cells from wearing out prematurely, thereby extending the overall durability and reliability of the storage device.
Transcribed Image Text:**Why is wear leveling required for SSDs?** Wear leveling is a technique used in solid-state drives (SSDs) to prolong their lifespan. Since SSDs have a limited number of write and erase cycles, wear leveling ensures that the memory cells are used evenly. This prevents certain cells from wearing out prematurely, thereby extending the overall durability and reliability of the storage device.
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Wear levelling:

The flash storage device can spread the P/E cycles equally among all blocks thanks to wear levelling methods. All blocks can be used to their full potential since it stops overused blocks from prematurely wearing out. Wear levelling increases the storage device's reliability and durability while extending its life.

There are three types of wear leveling.

Dynamic. ensures that only the blocks with the fewest erases are used for data writing. Because blocks holding infrequently accessible, static data are not included in the pool of free space, wear levelling is only possible in "hot" or regularly updated locations, which limits the number of blocks that can undergo wear levelling.

Static - In the wear levelling process, includes static data or "cold" blocks. If a block contains static or seldom accessible data, its write/erase count is low. From "cold" blocks to "hot" blocks, the data is transferred, and the freed-up block is added to the pool of available space for future usage. Because moving static data around requires several procedures, reassigning static data is a more difficult process. Static wear levelling only covers one flash die, while being more efficient in extending the lifespan of flash storage.

Global - Similar to static wear levelling in that it covers both blocks containing static data and free space, the primary distinction is that it covers the entire flash storage device.

Performance Impact:Static wear levelling can take a while because it needs to be done in the background in order to prevent slowing down the SSD's read and write speeds. Wear levelling may be approached slightly differently by various manufacturers, and this may have a varying impact on the performance or dependability of SSDs.

A competent flash controller is optimised for various flash memory architectures, such as SLC, MLC, TLC, or QLC, and the unique characteristics of flash devices. Users won't even be aware that wear levelling is taking place. The SSD life duration has just been increased as a result.

 

 

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