Volume 13, Number 6, 547-554, DOI: 10.1007/s11036-008-0089-6

The Real-Time Compression Layer for Flash Memory in Mobile Multimedia Devices

Chin-Hsing Chen, Chun-Ta Chen and Wen-Tzeng Huang

From the issue entitled "Special Issue on Ambient Media and Systems. Guest Editors: Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, Klaus Moessner, K. Selçuk Candan, Ben Liang and Jiangchuan Liu"

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Abstract

Flash memory is used for storage in mobile multimedia and embedded systems such as mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players because of its small size, light weight, nonvolatile operation, vibration resistance, high capacity, and low power consumption. Data compression is one effective method for increasing capacity and reducing data transfer, however real-time performance is necessary for mobile multimedia device applications. We propose a mechanism that uses contiguous packing and a read/write ping-pong buffer along with the X-match and run-length compression/decompression algorithm to create a real-time compression layer. Compared to the internal packing scheme and best-fit method of Yim et al., our mechanism increases the compression ratio, improves the write response time by 60%, and stabilizes the read response time to make it suitable for real-time applications.

Keywords  embedded systems - flash memory - real-time compression layer - mobile multimedia device

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