Mobile computing is sweeping the world. Recent studies are pointing to the permanent storage in mobile computing platforms being a weak link. Due to considerations of power and physical footprint, flash has been the storage technology of choice hitherto in mobile platforms. Flash and other newer storage technologies, such as PCM and STT-RAM, have their own idiosyncrasies both from the point of view of architecting them and integrating them in the operating system. In this project, we focus on the system software and hardware issues, in an integrated fashion, in the construction of high-performance storage architecture for mobile platforms. We will analyze the source of storage-related performance bottlenecks on mobile platforms at different levels of the software stack using a combination of measurement, simulation, and real implementation on existing and emerging mobile platforms. We will propose solutions both at the system software and architecture levels for advancing the state-of-the-art in storage for mobile platforms, and conduct detailed quantitative evaluation of our solutions. This project with its focus on advancing the state-of-the-art in mobile storage technology can have unexpected economic and societal impact. We intend to make the research artifacts from this project (traces, workloads, and software) available to the broader research community through open source efforts. Despite technological advances, system software has lagged significantly behind the hardware in delivering the expected performance. The vision behind this project is an attempt to bridge this gap for the storage side of the system software stack through an integrated hardware/software approach.
