System and methods for increasing useful lifetime of a flash memory device

A computer program product, comprising a non-transitory tangible computer readable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein, said computer readable program code adapted to be executed to implement a method for improving utilization of a nonvolatile flash memory device which has pages whose guaranteed per-cycle erase time and guaranteed number of cycles are known, the method comprising:

• a. using erase time determination functionality to provide individual pages' de facto erase time per cycle for at least one cycle;
• b. using de-facto total erase-time accumulation functionality to store each individual page's cumulative, over cycles, de facto erase time (“de facto total erase time”) including incrementing, for each erase cycle to which an individual page is subjected, by the individual page's de facto erase time per cycle as provided by the erase time measurement functionality;
• and
• c. using flash memory page usage monitoring functionality to control usage of pages in flash memory including selecting at least one individual flash memory page depending on a comparison between the individual flash memory page's de facto total erase time and a guaranteed erase time computed as a product of the guaranteed per-cycle erase time and of the guaranteed number of cycles.

A method for improving utilization of a nonvolatile flash memory device which has pages whose guaranteed per-cycle erase time and guaranteed number of cycles are known, the method comprising:

• a. using erase time determination functionality to provide individual pages' de facto erase time per cycle for at least one cycle;
• b. using de-facto total erase-time accumulation functionality to store each individual page's cumulative, over cycles, de facto erase time (“de facto total erase time”) including incrementing, for each erase cycle to which an individual page is subjected, by the individual page's de facto erase time per cycle as provided by the erase time measurement functionality;
• and
• c. using flash memory page usage monitoring functionality to control usage of pages in flash memory including selecting at least one individual flash memory page depending on a comparison between the individual flash memory page's de facto total erase time and a guaranteed erase time computed as a product of the guaranteed per-cycle erase time and of the guaranteed number of cycles.