Methuselah Flash: Rewriting Codes for Extra Long Storage Lifetime

Motivated by embedded systems and datacenters that require long-life components, we extend the lifetime of Flash memory using rewriting codes that allow for multiple writes to a page before it needs to be erased. Although researchers have previously explored rewriting codes for this purpose, we make two significant contributions beyond prior work. First, we remove the assumption of idealized -- and unrealistically optimistic -- Flash cells used in prior work on endurance codes. Unfortunately, current Flash technology has a non-ideal interface, due to its underlying physical design, and does not, for example, allow all seemingly possible increases in a cell's level. We show how to provide the ideal multi-level cell interface, by developing a virtual Flash cell, and we evaluate its impact on existing endurance codes. Our second contribution is our development of novel endurance codes, called Methuselah Flash Codes (MFC), that provide better cost/lifetime trade-offs than previously studied codes.