An embedded storage framework abstracting each raw flash device as an MTD

Existing embedded flash storage systems are built based on a single MTD (Memory Technology Device) architecture no matter how many raw flash devices exist under a flash controller. The single-MTD architecture impedes exploiting device-level parallelism to further improve the performance of a storage system. In this paper, we design and implement a new embedded flash storage framework called MA (MTD-array), which abstracts each underlying raw flash device as an independent MTD device to boost performance. To verify its effectiveness, we implement a new flash file system called MA-UBIFS by incorporating UBIFS, one of the best contemporary flash file systems, into MA in Ubuntu 13.04 with 3.8.0 kernel. Simulation results from real-world applications show that MA-UBIFS outperforms UBIFS in mean response time by up to 71.6%. Further, we build an FPGA evaluation platform. Results from the hardware platform show that on average MA-UBIFS improves write and read throughput in a 2-MTD scenario by 55.2% and 84%, respectively.