Probe-based storage, also known as micro-electric mechanical systems
(MEMS) storage, is a new technology that is emerging to bypass the
fundamental limitations of disk drives. The design space of such
devices is particularly interesting because we can architect these
devices to different design points, each with different performance
characteristics. This makes it more difficult to understand how to use
probe-based storage in a system. Although researchers have modeled
access times and simulated performance of workloads, such simulations
are time-intensive and make it difficult to exhaustively search the
parameter space for optimal configurations. To address this problem,
we have created a parameterized analytical model that computes the
average request latency of a probe-based storage device. Our error
compared to a simulated device using real-world traces is small (less
than 15% for service time). With this model we can identify
configurations that will satisfy specific performance objectives,
greatly narrowing the search space of configurations one must
simulate.