F2FS File-System Merged Into Linux 3.8 Kernel

One of the merges not yet talked about for the Linux 3.8 kernel was the mainlining of the F2FS file-system for flash devices.

Samsung initially published the F2FS, Flash-Friendly File-System, code in early October as a new Linux file-system designed specifically for NAND flash memory-based storage devices. Initial benchmarks of the Flash-Friendly File-System were very impressive and the code was brought into an acceptable state for merging into Linux 3.8.

F2FS is based on Log-structured File System (LFS), which supports versatile "flash-friendly" features. The design has been focused on addressing the fundamental issues in LFS, which are snowball effect of wandering tree and high cleaning overhead.

Since flash-based storages show different characteristics according to the internal geometry or flash memory management schemes aka FTL, F2FS and tools support various parameters not only for configuring on-disk layout, but also for selecting allocation and cleaning algorithms.

The merge happened with this Git activity.

Benchmarks of the Linux F2FS file-system compared to other file-systems are forthcoming.