523 results about "Wear leveling" patented technology

A re-programmable non-volatile memory system, such as a flash EEPROM system, having its memory cells grouped into blocks of cells that are simultaneously erasable is operated in a manner to level out the wear of the individual blocks through repetitive erasing and re-programming. This may be accomplished without use of counts of the number of times the individual blocks experience erase and re-programming but such counts can optionally aid in carrying out the wear leveling process. Individual active physical blocks are chosen to be exchanged with those of an erased block pool in a predefined order.

Methods and apparatus for performing wear leveling in a non-volatile memory system are disclosed. Included is a method for performing wear leveling in a memory system that includes a first zone, which has a first memory element that includes contents, and a second zone includes identifying the first memory element and associating the contents of the first memory element with the second zone while disassociating the contents of the first memory element from the first zone. In one embodiment, associating the contents of the first memory element with the second involves moving contents of a second memory element into a third memory element, then copying the contents of the first memory element into the second memory element.

Disclosed herein is a controller architecture that pairs a controller with a NVM (non-volatile memory) storage system over a high-level, high speed interface such as PCIe. In one embodiment, the NVM storage system includes a bridge that communicates with the controller via the high-level interface, and controls the NVM via an interface (e.g., ONFI). The controller is provided a rich set of physical level of controls over individual elements of the NVM. In one embodiment, the controller is implemented in a higher powered processor that supports advanced functions such as mapping, garbage collection, wear leveling, etc. In one embodiment, the bridge is implemented in a lower powered processor and performs basic signal processing, channel management, basic error correction functions, etc. This labor division provides the controller physical control of the NVM over a fast, high-level interface, resulting in the controller managing the NVM at both the page and block level.

A storage system using flash memories includes a storage controller and plural flash memory modules as storage media. Each flash memory module includes at least one flash memory chip and a memory controller for leveling erase counts of blocks belonging to the flash memory chip. The storage controller combines the plural flash memory modules into a first logical group, translates a first address used for accessing the flash memory modules belonging to the first logical group to a second address used for handling the first address in the storage controller, and combines the plural first logical groups into a second logical group.

An electronic memory module according to the invention provides non-volatile memory that can be used in place of a DRAM module without battery backup. An embodiment of the invention includes an embedded microprocessor with microcode that translates the FB-DIMM address and control signals from the system into appropriate address and control signals for NAND flash memory. Wear-leveling, bad block management, garbage collection are preferably implemented by microcode executed by the microprocessor. The microprocessor, additional logic, and embedded memory provides the functions of a flash memory controller. The microprocessor memory preferably contains address mapping tables, free page queue, and garbage collection information.