Circular Business Model for Worn Out SSDs Using Proofs of Space and Time

Truong, Tramy

Student Work

Circular Business Model for Worn Out SSDs Using Proofs of Space and Time

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Solid-State Drives (SSDs) have an intrinsically limited amount of endurance (endurance rating) or ‘total data written to the device’, due to wear out of the NAND Flash Floating Gate. Read/write cycling of the NAND flash in the SSDs stresses the oxide layer that isolated the floating gate, leading to its breakdown over time and increased uncorrectable bit error rate (UBER). SSD vendors will set the endurance ratings in their warranty to ensure it is well before the drive begins to fail. Replacement of SSDs, prior to reaching their endurance rating and warranty, is a common place. Circular business models, where product life cycles are designed to maximize value delivery and minimize environment impact, are becoming increasingly essential in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry. The significant carbon impact of manufacturing complex storage devices is leading to a desire to ensure the SSDs are used to their absolute maximum utilization. Today there are limited use cases for SSDs that have reached their warranty endurance rating as Total Terabytes Written (TBW). I hypothesize that storage-based cryptocurrency based on proofs of space can utilize SSDs that have a large amount of ware and exhibit a higher UBER. Providing valuable secondary usages for such SSDs, provides greater overall value in connection to the manufacturing carbon footprint to build the SSD.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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