LogFS, A Scalable Flash Filesystem
(Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:13:09 +0000)
Jörn Engel posted the sixth version of patches introducing his new LogFS filesystem for flash devices to the Linux kernel. He highlighted some areas of the code that need some more work, and cc'd the appropriate people for further review. Regarding LogFS itself, he noted that one of its big advantages compared to other solutions was improved mount time and reduced memory consumption compared to other solutions, "LogFS has an on-medium tree, fairly similar to Ext2 in structure, so mount times are O(1)." He went on to add that flash is becoming more and more common in standard PC hardware, explaining:
"Flash behaves significantly different to hard disks. In order to use flash, the current standard practice is to add an emulation layer and an old-fashioned hard disk filesystem. As can be expected, this is eating up some of the benefits flash can offer over hard disks. In principle it is possible to achieve better performance with a flash filesystem than with the current emulated approach. In practice our current flash filesystems are not even near that theoretical goal. LogFS in its current state is already closer."