Differentiated Protection and Hot/Cold-Aware Data Placement Policies through k-Means Clustering Analysis for 3D-NAND SSDs

3D-NAND flash memory provides high capacity per unit area by stacking 2D-NAND cells having a planar structure. However, because of the nature of the lamination process, the frequency of error occurrence varies depending on each layer or physical cell location. This phenomenon becomes more pronounced as the number of flash memory write/erase (Program/Erasure) operations increases. Error correction code (ECC) is used for error correction in the majority of flash-based storage devices, such as SSDs (Solid State Drive). As this method provides a constant level of data protection for all-flash memory pages, there is a limitation in 3D-NAND flash memory, where the error rate varies depending on physical location. Consequently, in this paper, pages and layers with varying error rates are classified into clusters using the k-means machine-learning algorithm, and each cluster is assigned a different level of data protection strength. We classify pages and layers based on the number of error occurrences measured at the end of the endurance test, and for areas vulnerable to errors, it is shown as an example of providing differentiated data protection strength by adding parity data to the stripe. Furthermore, areas vulnerable to retention errors are identified based on retention error rates, and bit error rates are significantly reduced through our hot/cold-aware data placement policy. We show that the proposed differential data protection and hot/cold-aware data placement policies improve the reliability and lifespan of 3D-NAND flash memory compared with the existing ECC- or RAID-type data protection scheme.