PDA-LSTM: Knowledge-driven page data arrangement based on LSTM for LCM supression in QLC 3D NAND flash memories

TL;DR

This paper introduces PDA-LSTM, a physics-knowledge-driven neural network model that optimizes intra-page data arrangement in QLC 3D NAND flash memories to significantly reduce bit error rates caused by lateral charge migration.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel LSTM-based data arrangement method that suppresses LCM effects without extra flag bits, outperforming existing intra-page data mapping strategies.

Findings

Reduces average BER by 80.4% compared to no arrangement

Outperforms WBVM and DVDS strategies by 18.4% and 15.2% respectively

Does not require extra flag bits for data transport management

Abstract

Quarter level cell (QLC) 3D NAND flash memory is emerging as the predominant storage solution in the era of artificial intelligence. QLC 3D NAND flash stores 4 bit per cell to expand the storage density, resulting in narrower read margins. Constrained to read margins, QLC always suffers from lateral charge migration (LCM), which caused by non-uniform charge density across adjacent memory cells. To suppress charge density gap between cells, there are some algorithm in form of intra-page data mapping such as WBVM, DVDS. However, we observe inter-page data arrangements also approach the suppression. Thus, we proposed an intelligent model PDA-LSTM to arrange intra-page data for LCM suppression, which is a physics-knowledge-driven neural network model. PDA-LSTM applies a long-short term memory (LSTM) neural network to compute a data arrangement probability matrix from input page data pattern. The arrangement is to minimize the global impacts derived from the LCM among wordlines. Since each page data can be arranged only once, we design a transformation from output matrix of LSTM network to non-repetitive sequence generation probability matrix to assist training process. The arranged data pattern can decrease the bit error rate (BER) during data retention. In addition, PDA-LSTM do not need extra flag bits to record data transport of 3D NAND flash compared with WBVM, DVDS. The experiment results show that the PDA-LSTM reduces the average BER by 80.4% compared with strategy without data arrangement, and by 18.4%, 15.2% compared respectively with WBVM and DVDS with code-length 64.