Patent attributes
A solid state drive with a capability to select physical flash memory blocks and erasure and programming methods according to requirements of an application using storage in the solid state drive. A wear-out tracker in the solid state drive counts programming and erase cycles, and a raw bit error rate tracker in the solid state drive monitors raw bit errors in data read from the solid state drive. The application provides, to the solid state, drive requirements on an allowable retention time, corresponding to the anticipated storage time of data stored by the application, and on an average response time corresponding to programming and read times for the flash memory. The solid state drive identifies physical flash memory blocks suitable for meeting the requirements, and allocates storage space to the application from among the identified physical flash memory blocks.
