Woodhouse on flash storage

[Martin Langhoff]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Chris Ball <cjb at laptop.org> wrote:
> I don't think there's much we can use Dave's advice for given the
> choice of microSD.  If a microSD card that had a passthrough mode
> to access the raw flash existed, his argument would be that we
> should consider using that mode.

Exactly. To expand: we are in the same pickle as the rest of the
industry. This article gives some good background reading to David's
words http://lwn.net/Articles/353411/ -- and if you've been following
her writing, Valerie knows a ton about FSs, including work on ZFS.

All we can do is

 - Tune our partitioning to match eraseblock boundaries to extend the
life of the device by avoiding pointless churn.

 - Test the SDs hard hard HARD so we know that the FTL is not falling
off a cliff in reliability or performance. Wad's torture-that-SD rig
works on that angle.

 - Side with other Linux devs in asking for direct access, proper TRIM
support, etc. Pray it happens :-)

cheers,



m
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