Memory ECC Feedback for Host-Coordinated Error Handling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Memory devices in electronic systems face reliability issues due to differing error detection/correction techniques between the memory device and host device, leading to increased bit errors and inefficiencies, particularly in safety-critical environments.
Innovation Solution
The memory device indicates detected errors to the host device, allowing the host to manage data handling and storage more effectively, including preventing the use of data with excessive errors and performing targeted scrubbing procedures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the memory device performs internal error detection and correction, then data corruption is detected or corrected, but additional errors may be introduced due to mismatched correction techniques between memory device and host device
Solution Approach 1:
The memory device provides feedback to the host device by setting an error indication bit when it detects and corrects an error internally. This feedback mechanism allows the host to awareness of corrected errors and adjust its own error correction operations accordingly, preventing the host from attempting to correct already-corrected data and thereby eliminating the source of additional bit errors.
Solution Approach 2:
The error indication bit serves as an intermediary signal between the memory device's error correction mechanism and the host device's error handling. This intermediary communication channel enables coordinated error management, allowing the host to defer or modify its error correction actions based on the memory device's correction status, thus preventing harmful interactions between the two error correction systems.
2Reliability
If the host device performs error correction on received data, then data errors are corrected, but efficiency is reduced due to redundant correction operations
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of the host device always performing full error correction on received data, the system applies partial action by conditionally executing host-side error correction only when the error indication bit is not set. When the bit indicates the memory device has already corrected an error, the host skips its correction operation, thereby eliminating redundant processing while maintaining data integrity.
3Reliability
If error correction is performed at both memory device and host device, then comprehensive error handling is achieved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the error coordination logic from the complex interaction between two error correction systems and isolates it into a simple error indication bit mechanism. By separating the coordination function into this dedicated signal, the system reduces overall complexity while maintaining comprehensive error handling capabilities at both the memory device and host device levels.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and devices for coordinated error correction are described. A memory device indicates, for example to an external device, that errors were detected in data that was stored by the memory device and requested by the external device based on a comparison between an error correction code stored when the data was written to a memory array and an error correction code generated when the data is read from the memory array. Based on the comparison, an indication of or based on whether the compared error correction codes match is provided to the external device. The external device uses the indication to detect errors in the received version of the data, or to manage data storage in the memory device, or both.