Instant data deletion (or sanitization) in NAND flash devices is essential for achieving data privacy, but it remains challenging due to the mismatch between erase and write granularities, which leads to high overhead and accelerated wear. While page-overwrite-based instant data sanitization has proven effective for 2D NAND, its applicability to 3D NAND is limited due to the unique sub-block architecture. In this study, we experimentally evaluate page-overwrite-based sanitization on commercial 3D NAND flash memory chips and uncover significant threshold voltage disturbances in erased cells on adjacent pages within the same layer but across different sub-blocks. Our key findings reveal that page-overwrite sanitization increases the median raw bit error rate (RBER) beyond correction limits (exceeding 0.93%) in Floating-Gate (FG) Single-Level Cell (SLC) technology, whereas Charge-Trap (CT) SLC 3D NAND flash memories exhibit higher robustness. In Triple-Level Cell (TLC) 3D NAND, page-overwrite sanitization proves impractical, with the median RBER of ∼13% for FG and ∼5% for CT devices. To overcome these challenges, we propose PULSE , a low-disturbance sanitization technique that balances sanitization efficiency ( \({{\eta }_{san}}\) ) and data integrity (RBER). Experimental results show that PULSE eliminates RBER increases in SLC devices and reduces the median RBER to below 0.57% for FG and 0.79% for CT in fresh TLC blocks, demonstrating its practical viability for 3D NAND flash sanitization.

Continual vertical scaling in 3D NAND flash solid-state drives (SSDs) results in larger memory blocks, causing performance degradation due to big-block management issues. Pages within a 3D NAND flash block are traditionally written using layer first write sequencing. This paper introduces and explores the benefits of an alternative sub-block first write sequence. This method when coupled with sub-block erase operations promises to alleviate the big-block problem. Our evaluation on a commercial 32-layer 3D NAND flash SSD chip shows that though the proposed method increases the raw bit error rate (RBER), it remains below the threshold that can be corrected by error correction codes (ECCs). Simulation analysis further shows that our proposed method reduces garbage collection overhead, resulting in 36.0% lower response time and 9.6% reduction in additional writes due to garbage collection compared to traditional 3D NAND flash SSDs.

In this paper, we evaluate thermal annealing effects on the endurance of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) 3D NAND flash memory beyond its end-of-life. We systematically evaluate the effects of anneal duration, anneal temperature, and state of the memory cells during annealing on the endurance enhancement. Interestingly, we find that endurance enhancement critically depends on the state of flash memory cells during annealing, with programmed cells showing significantly larger improvements than erased cells. Our experimental evaluation indicates that the post-cycle data retention property of an annealed chip significantly improves after thermal annealing, resulting in ~30% endurance recovery. Our results have significant implications for the future wear-leveling algorithms of SSD-based storage systems.

The infiltration of counterfeit electronics into the global supply chain is a growing concern that poses significant challenges for both manufacturers and consumers. This paper introduces Flash-Odometer, an innovative technique designed to estimate the age and usage statistics of NAND flash memory blocks. Flash-Odometer works by analyzing key characteristics of NAND arrays, which are highly dependent on the defect density in the gate dielectric of the flash memory cells. Our experimental evaluation, conducted on state-of-the-art 3D NAND chips from a leading manufacturer, demonstrates that the Flash-Odometer accurately predicts the program-erase (PE) cycle count of NAND memory blocks. This provides a unique and reliable method for estimating chip usage, which is instrumental in detecting recycled memory chips.

Deleting data instantly from NAND flash memories incurs hefty overheads, and increases wear level. Existing solutions involve unlinking the physical page addresses making data inaccessible through standard interfaces, but they carry the risk of data leakage. An all-zero-in-place data overwrite has been proposed as a countermeasure, but it applies only to SLC flash memories. This paper introduces an instant page data sanitization method for MLC flash memories that prevents leakage of deleted information without any negative effects on valid data in shared pages. We implement and evaluate the proposed method on commercial 2D and 3D NAND flash memory chips.