nand Flash Memory and Its Role in Storage Architectures

This papers reviews the increasing role of NAND flash memory in storage architectures. NAND flash has enjoyed a phenomenal growth rate in storage capacities as well as a steady decline in pricing during the past few years. These developments have enabled NAND to enter and possibly change or displace some traditional storage architectures. However, besides cost, NAND flash memory has some reliability and performance issues that will slow its adoption into all storage architectures. This paper will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of this technology and the implications to the current and possible future storage architectures. Moreover, we will analyze NAND flash future density and costs trends and compare them with the traditional hard disk drive.