Zf-FTL: A zero-free flash translation layer

Abstract

Data reduction schemes accompany additional metadata maintenance overhead and computation overhead, they have been implemented in host systems with relatively rich amounts of resources rather than the inside of storage devices with insufficient resources. However, following the recent advent of flash memory based Solid State Drives (SSD), attempts to apply these schemes to the inside of storage devices have been active. Nevertheless, complex data reduction schemes such as compression and deduplication cannot still be easily utilized in the inside of SSD without being accelerated by additional hardware. In this paper, we develop a zerofree FTL (zf-FTL), an FTL which equips with the zero page elimination functionality. The zf-FTL effectively reduces the amount of data that will be actually written to the flash memory without requiring any additional data structure or dedicated hardware.