Analysis of Trim Commands on Overprovisioning and Write Amplification in Solid State Drives

Abstract: This paper presents a performance model of the ATA/ATAPI SSD Trim command under various types of user workloads, including a uniform random workload, a workload with hot and cold data, and a workload with N temperatures of data. We first examine the Trim-modified uniform random workload to predict utilization, then use this result to compute the resultant level of effective overprovisioning. This allows modification of models previously suggested to predict write amplification of a non-Trim uniform random workload under greedy garbage collection. Finally, we expand the theory to cover a workload consisting of hot and cold data (and also N temperatures of data), providing formulas to predict write amplification in these scenarios.