5.3 Wear Leveling

Wear leveling is a critical NAND Flash device management technique designed to extend the lifespan of memory by distributing write and erase cycles evenly across all blocks.

Since NAND Flash cells have a finite number of program/erase (P/E) cycles, continuously writing to the same physical locations can lead to premature wear-out and data loss. Wear leveling algorithms—typically implemented in the Flash Translation Layer (FTL) or by the file system—track usage patterns and dynamically remap data to less-used blocks. This ensures balanced wear across the device and helps maintain long-term reliability, especially in write-intensive embedded applications.