Back to results
US 2006/0143541 A1Published application
Method of and apparatus for detecting an error in writing to persistent memory
AssigneeSharp Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorAndrew Kay
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Loading patent…
Loading patent…
AssigneeSharp Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorAndrew Kay
Estimating the term…
A technique is provided for detecting errors in persistent memory, such as flash memory, where values of data items are stored at memory locations added consecutively to one end of the already-allocated memory segment. When a new location is added, a pointer to the address of the new location is stored at the location of a preceding value for that item. The address of the latest location is determined (21) whenever power is reapplied. The pointer fields of the locations are searched (24) for any pointer whose value is greater than the address of the last location. If such a pointer value is found, this indicates that an error occurred when writing the pointer value, for example because power was removed before completion of the pointer writing cycle. The error can be corrected by changing the pointer value to the address of the last location (27).
A method of detecting an error in a persistent memory segment in which values of at least one data item are stored in temporally consecutively allocated memory locations, each new memory location is added to a first end of a block of the memory segment having first and second ends, and a pointer to each new memory location is added to an old memory location in the block containing a preceding value of the at least one data item, the method being characterised by comprising:
An apparatus comprising a persistent memory segment, a portion which stores values of at least one data item in temporally consecutively allocated memory locations with each new memory location being added to a first end of a block of the memory segment having first and second ends, a portion which adds a pointer pointing to each new memory location to an old memory location in the block containing a preceding value of the at least one data item, and characterised by a portion which determines the address to which the last-added pointer points, a portion which compares the determined address with an address range of the memory block including the last new memory location (LUM), and a portion which performs an action if the determined address is outside the address range.
An apparatus comprising a flash memory segment, means for storing values of at least one data item in temporally consecutively allocated memory locations with each new memory location being added to a first end of a block of the memory segment having first and second ends, means for adding a pointer pointing to each new memory location to an old memory location in the block containing a preceding value of the at least one data item, means for determining the address to which the last-added pointer points, means for comparing the determined address with an address range of the memory block including the last new memory location, and means for performing an action if the determined address is outside the address range.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.