How Controllers Maximize SSD Life – Internal NAND Management

Tempus FugitGiven that you have used all those other forms of improving SSD wear that we have discussed so far, but you still don’t find that this is enough, what do you do next?  Well a few SSD controllers go one step further and manage some of the inner workings of the NAND flash chip itself.

If that sounds like a significant undertaking to you, then you clearly understand why so very few controllers take this approach.  The information used to perform this function is not generally available – it takes a special relationship with the NAND flash supplier – and you can’t develop this relationship unless the NAND supplier Continue reading “How Controllers Maximize SSD Life – Internal NAND Management”

How Controllers Maximize SSD Life

Tempus FugitHow do controllers maximize the life of an SSD?  After all, MLC flash has a lifetime of only 10,000 erase/write cycles or fewer and that is a very small number compared to the write traffic an SSD is expected to see in a high-workload environment, especially in the enterprise.  Still, MLC is becoming the norm in the enterprise.

How do they do that?

This is where SSD architects really earn their pay.  There are eight basic techniques that The SSD Guy knows of to extend SSD life beyond Continue reading “How Controllers Maximize SSD Life”