UP-GDBF: A 19.3 Gbps Error Floor Free 4KB LDPC Decoder for NAND Flash Applications

An error floor phenomenon, decoding performance, and throughput are three major concerns for LDPC decoders in NAND Flash applications. With a penalty method and an active iteration mechanism, we present a Unified Penalty Gradient Descent Bit Flipping (UP-GDBF) decoding algorithm, which not only possesses error-floor free property but also improves convergence speed in decoding performance. To fulfill the high-throughput requirement while maintaining reliable error correction capability, we propose an energy-based backtracking scheme to reduce 40% latency with a negligible 0.8% area overhead. Implemented in TSMC 16nm process, the proposed 4KB LDPC decoder can achieve a throughput of 19.3 Gbps with 0.120 mm2 area to satisfy ONFI 5.0 throughput requirement. Compared to existing approaches, our decoder architecture provides superior data rate and decoding performance in both 1KB and 4KB LDPC codes.