PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to make an overview of 474 publications and 512 patents of FTL from 1987 to 2020 in order to provide a conclusive and comprehensive analysis for researchers in this field, as well as a preliminary knowledge of FTL for interested researchers.Design/methodology/approachFirstly, the FTL algorithms are classified and its functions are introduced in detail. Secondly, the structures of the publications are analyzed in terms of the fundamental information and the publication of the most productive countries/regions, institutions and authors. After that, co-citation networks of institutions, authors and papers illustrated by VOS Viewer are given to show the relationship among those and the most influential of them is further analyzed. Then, the characteristics of the patent are analyzed based on the basic information and classification of the patent and the most productive inventors. In order to obtain research hotspots and trends in this field, the time-line review and citation burst detection of keywords carried out by Cite Space are made to be visual. Finally, based on the above analysis, it draws some other important conclusions and the development trend of this field.FindingsThe research on FTL algorithm is still the top priority in the future, and how to improve the performance of SSD in the era of big data is one of the research hotspots.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper makes a comprehensive analysis of FTL with the method of bibliometrics, and it is valuable for researchers can quickly grasp the hotspots in this area.Originality/valueThis article draws the structural characteristics of the publications in this field and summarizes the research hotspots and trends in this field in recent years, aiming to inspire new ideas for researchers.

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