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Date:      Thu, 25 May 2006 21:29:24 +0200
From:      Olivier Gautherot <olivier@gautherot.net>
To:        Andrew Atrens <atrens@nortel.com>
Cc:        Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>, small@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD's embedded agenda
Message-ID:  <1148585364.447605943e3e1@imp2-g19.free.fr>
In-Reply-To: <4475F967.5040806@nortel.com>
References:  <3981.1148578569@critter.freebsd.dk> <4475EFC1.1020504@nortel.com> <1148580598.4475f2f677197@imp2-g19.free.fr> <4475F967.5040806@nortel.com>

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Hi Andrew!

> Yes, exactly... that's precisely what 'wear-leveling' is meant to do ..
>
> I think I mentioned wear-leveling further back in the email chain ..

You did indeed mention it.

> Yes, you definitely want wear-leveling. The debate is whether the
> filesystem knows about it, versus it being managed by a lower level
> 'driver'.

If I were told to start the design now, I would advocate to keep all
Flash-specific features in a low-level driver and let the filesystem take care
of upper concepts. After all, the cylinder concept of a spinning disk does not
always match the physical structure so we could follow the same logic.

By Flash-specific features, I mean:
- Erased bits set to 1 (that's another constraint, common to NAND and NOR, you
can't write a 1 on a 0)
- Seek time of 0
- Wear-leveling
- Garbage collection

For the filesystem, we could think of a standard one - why reinvent the wheel
when FreeBSD already has a good one that could be used, possibly with a few
tweaks? Unless we want to plug compression in, what could be helpful and is
sometimes desired.

Just a tought
--
Olivier Gautherot
olivier@gautherot.net
Tel: +56 8 730 9361



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