Reliable Processing in Flash With High Temperature

Flash’s endurance limits its employment in data-intensive processing in-memory (PiM) applications. We propose a high-temperature environment and Circadian Rhythm adoption to tackle the endurance limitation of flash memory that is used as a processing element. We found that flash memory behaves more reliably at higher temperatures, and Circadian Rhythm prevents most of the permanent damage. Even though data retention decreases with increasing temperature, flash operations (read, erase, program) yield more correct outcomes and are less destructive (causing less stress) at high temperatures. Therefore, in contrast to storage applications, PiM applications perform more reliably at high temperatures. We propose a solid-state drive architecture that consists of both hot (for processing) and cold (for storage) flash memories. Our results indicate that lifetime without an Error Correction Code (ECC) (i.e., considering the first occurrence of an error) increases by 100%, and raw byte error at 180k Program/Erase cycle count decreases by 99.975% while increasing the temperature from 50 °C to 95 °C. Employment of Circadian Rhythms “500-1h” (i.e., 500 P/E cycles followed by 1 hour of recovery) increases lifetime without an ECC of the flash by 82%, and decreases raw byte error by 95.5% over “200k-10h”. This promising increase in lifetime paves the way for processing data-intensive applications in flash.