Constant Time Garbage Collection in SSDs

FADaC

Solid state drives (SSDs) implement a log-structured write pattern, where obsolete data remains stored on flash pages until the flash translation layer (FTL) erases them. erase() operations, however, cannot erase a single page, but target entire flash blocks. Since these victim blocks typically store a mix of valid and obsolete pages, FTLs have to copy the valid data to a new block before issuing an erase() operation. This process therefore increases the latencies of concurrent I/Os and reduces the lifetime of flash memory. Data classification schemes identify data pages with similar update frequencies and group them together. FTLs can use this grouping to design garbage collection strategi…