Re: What is ANAND header?

[Artem Bityutskiy <dedekind@infradead.org>]

On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 23:30 +0800, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 20:12 +1100, Artem Bityutskiy wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 15:49 +0900, Seongsu Lee wrote:
> > > Then, is there any technical reason that translation layer
> > > for bare NAND flash memory is *not* exist?
> > 
> > Just because it is a damn difficult task. 
> 
> No it isn't. It's just not an _interesting_ task. A 'normal' file system
> on top of a translation layer is always going to be suboptimal when
> compared to a file system designed to run directly on flash.

Well, FTL is somewhat similar to flash FS in terms of complexity. A
reasonably good FTL is probably not a damn difficult task. But a
scalable FTL where you do not need to scan your device when initializing
it is really difficult.

Of course, FTL will always be slower then flash-oriented FS. But if you
have a very quick HW (like Cafe?) you may end-up with an acceptable
speed - this depends on requirements.

Also, if you teach the FS to inform FTL about blocks that are free -
it'll be much faster.

-- 
Best regards,
Artem Bityutskiy (Битюцкий Артём)