Program Error Mitigation in MLC NAND Flash Memory with Soft Decision Decoders

Benefiting from strong decoding capabilities,soft-decision decoding has been used to replace hard-decision decoding in various communication systems,and NAND flash memory systems are no exception.However,soft-decision decoding relies heavily on accurate soft information.Owing to the incremental step pulse programming(ISPP),program errors(PEs)in multi-level cell(MLC)NAND flash memory have different characteristics compared to other types of errors,which is very difficult to obtain such accurate soft information.Therefore,the characteristics of the log-likelihood ratio(LLR)of PEs are investigated first in this paper.Accordingly,a PE-aware statistical method is proposed to determine the usage of PE mitigation schemes.In order to reduce the PE estimating workload of the controller,an adaptive blind clipping(ABC)scheme is proposed subsequently to approximate the PEs contaminated LLR with different decoding trials.Finally,simulation results demonstrate that(1)the proposed PE-aware statistical method is effective in practice,and(2)ABC scheme is able to provide satisfactory bit error rate(BER)and frame error rate(FER)performance in a penalty of negligible increasing of decoding latency.

Software defect prevention based on human error theories

Software defect prevention is an important way to reduce the defect introduction rate.As the primary cause of software defects,human error can be the key to understanding and preventing software defects.This paper proposes a defect prevention approach based on human error mechanisms：DPe HE.The approach includes both knowledge and regulation training in human error prevention.Knowledge training provides programmers with explicit knowledge on why programmers commit errors,what kinds of errors tend to be committed under different circumstances,and how these errors can be prevented.Regulation training further helps programmers to promote the awareness and ability to prevent human errors through practice.The practice is facilitated by a problem solving checklist and a root cause identification checklist.This paper provides a systematic framework that integrates knowledge across disciplines,e.g.,cognitive science,software psychology and software engineering to defend against human errors in software development.Furthermore,we applied this approach in an international company at CMM Level 5 and a software development institution at CMM Level 1 in the Chinese Aviation Industry.The application cases show that the approach is feasible and effective in promoting developers＇ ability to prevent software defects,independent of process maturity levels.