Memory device
OwnerAlan Welsh Sinclairinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An addressable memory device for storing blocks of varying length, utilises a write pointer (18) to indicate the address of the next location to which data are to be written and an erase pointer (16) to indicate the address of the next location from which data are to be erased. It has a sector header (20) appended to each group of data containing information (38) indicating the length of the corresponding sector of data, and the location stored by the write pointer (14), which is selected to ensure that there is always at least one erased block adjacent to the current write block.
Claims7
An addressable memory device for storing data arranged in groups 12, said groups of data not being of a fixed length, comprising a memory 10, a write pointer 18 adapted to indicate an address of the next set of locations to which data are to be written and an erase pointer 16 adapted to indicate the address of the next location from which data are to be erased characterised in that a sector header 20 is appended to each group of stored data, the location stored by the write pointer 14 being selected to ensure that there is always at least one set of erased memory location adjacent to the set of locations indicated by said write pointer.
An addressable memory device for storing blocks of data, where the blocks of data are not of a fixed length, according to any preceding claim characterised in that the sector header contains means 36 for indicating the address generated by the host.
An addressable memory device for storing blocks of data, where the blocks of data are not of a fixed length, according to any preceding claim characterised in that the sector header contains means 40 for correcting or checking the data bits in the said sector header.
An addressable memory device for storing blocks of data, where the blocks of data are not of a fixed length, according to any preceding claim characterised in that the sector header contains means 20 for indicating whether the sector data has been compressed or not.
An addressable memory device for storing blocks of data, where the blocks of data are not of a fixed length, according to any preceding claim characterised in that the physical memory locations 14 between the write pointer and the erase pointer are held in the erased state.
A computer system including an addressable memory device according to any one of the preceding claims.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.