Improving the Reliability of Next Generation SSDs using WOM-v Codes

Abstract: High density Solid State Drives, such as QLC drives, offer increased storage capacity, but a magnitude lower Program and Erase (P/E) cycles, limiting their endurance and hence usability. We present the design and implementation of non-binary, Voltage-Based Write-Once-Memory (WOM-v) Codes to improve the lifetime of QLC drives. First, we develop a FEMU based simulator test-bed to evaluate the gains of WOM-v codes on real world workloads. Second, we propose and implement two optimizations, an efficient garbage collection mechanism and an encoding optimization to drastically improve WOM-v code endurance without compromising performance. A careful evaluation, including microbenchmarks and trace-driven evaluation, demonstrates that WOM-v codes can reduce Erase cycles for QLC drives by 4.4x-11.1x for real world workloads with minimal performance overheads resulting in improved QLC SSD lifetime.