CFTL: A Convertible Flash Translation Layer adaptive to data access patterns

The flash translation layer (FTL) is a software/hardware interface inside NAND flash memory. Since FTL has a critical impact on the performance of NAND flash-based devices, a variety of FTL schemes have been proposed to improve their performance. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid FTL scheme named Convertible Flash Translation Layer (CFTL). Unlike other existing FTLs using static address mapping schemes, CFTL is adaptive to data access patterns so that it can dynamically switch its mapping scheme to either a read-optimized or a write-optimized mapping scheme. In addition to this convertible scheme, we propose an efficient caching strategy to further improve the CFTL performance with only a simple hint. Consequently, both the convertible feature and the caching strategy empower CFTL to achieve good read performance as well as good write performance.