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Improving the Reliability of MLC NAND Flash Memories Through Adaptive Data Refresh and Error Control Coding

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Abstract

NAND Flash memory has become the most widely used non-volatile memory technology. We focus on multi-level cell (MLC) NAND Flash memories because they have high storage density. Unfortunately MLC NAND Flash memory also has reliability problems due to narrower threshold voltage gap between logical states. Errors in these memories can be classified into data retention (DR) errors and program interference (PI) errors. DR errors are dominant if the data storage time is longer than 1 day and these errors can be reduced by refreshing the data. PI errors are dominant if the data storage time is less than 1 day and these errors can be handled by error control coding (ECC). In this paper we propose a combination of data refresh policies and low cost ECC schemes that are cognizant of application characteristics to address the errors in MLC NAND Flash memories. First, we use Gray code based encoding to reduce the error rates in the four subpages (MSB-even, LSB-even, MSB-odd, LSB-odd) of a 2-bit MLC NAND Flash memory. Next, we apply data refresh techniques where the refresh interval is a function of the program/erase (P/E) frequency of the application. We show that an appropriate choice of refresh interval and BCH based ECC scheme can minimize memory energy while satisfying the reliability constraint.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Chengen Yang, Hsing-Min Chen & Chaitali Chakrabarti

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Trevor N. Mudge

Authors
  1. Chengen Yang
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  2. Hsing-Min Chen
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  3. Trevor N. Mudge
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  4. Chaitali Chakrabarti
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chengen Yang.

Additional information

This work was supported in part by DARPA-PERFECT and by NSF CSR-0910699.

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Yang, C., Chen, HM., Mudge, T.N. et al. Improving the Reliability of MLC NAND Flash Memories Through Adaptive Data Refresh and Error Control Coding. J Sign Process Syst 76, 225–234 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-014-0880-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-014-0880-5

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