System including a fine-grained memory and a less-fine-grained memory

A memory system comprising:

• a non-volatile memory comprising a plurality of pages, where units of the memory smaller than one of the pages of the memory are not independently writable, and where each of the pages of the memory comprises a respective user-accessible portion;
• a map configured to associate respective element identifiers of each of a plurality of elements with a respective physical location of the element in the memory, where the respective physical location comprises an address of a respective one of the pages of the memory and a respective offset within the respective page of the memory;
• a coalescing buffer comprising a plurality of pages, a size of each of the pages of the coalescing buffer being sufficient to contain the respective user-accessible portion of one of the pages of the memory;
• wherein the memory system is configured to write a first one of the elements to the memory by
• storing the first element in a first portion of a particular one of the pages of the coalescing buffer,
• copying the particular page of the coalescing buffer to a particular one of the pages of the memory, and
• updating the map so that the address of the respective page of the respective physical location of the first element is an address of the particular page of the memory, and so that the respective offset of the respective physical location of the first element is according to the first portion of the particular page of the coalescing buffer;
• and
• wherein the memory system is further configured, subsequent to the storing of the first element in the particular page of the coalescing buffer and prior to the copying of the particular page of the coalescing buffer to the particular page of the memory, to store a second one of the elements in a second portion of the particular page of the coalescing buffer, the second element different from the first element, the second portion separate from the first portion.

A method comprising:

• mapping, via a map comprising a plurality of entries, each of a plurality of elements associated via a respective element identifier with a corresponding and distinct one of the entries, the respective element identifier of a particular one of the elements to determine a respective physical location of the particular element in a non-volatile memory, where the non-volatile memory comprises a plurality of pages, where units of the non-volatile memory smaller than one of the pages are not independently writable, and where the respective physical location of the particular element comprises an address of a particular one of the pages and an offset within the particular page;
• reading the particular element by retrieving a first portion less than all of the particular page according to the offset, and where at least one of the elements other than the particular element is stored in a second portion of the particular page, the second portion exclusive of the first portion;
• and
• determining if the first portion has an error using a respective portion-specific error-detecting code of the first portion, the respective portion-specific error-detecting code of the first portion stored in the first portion.

A method comprising:

• coalescing a first one of a plurality of logical partitions stored in a first one of a plurality of pages of a non-volatile, less-fine-grained memory and a second one of the logical partitions stored in a second one of the pages of the less-fine-grained memory into separate regions in a particular page of a write buffer in a volatile, fine-grained memory, where each of the pages of the less-fine-grained memory is enabled to store a respective two or more of the logical partitions, and where a minimum writable unit of the less-fine-grained memory is one of the pages of the less-fine-grained memory;
• writing, subsequent to the coalescing, the particular page of the write buffer to a third one of the pages of the less-fine-grained memory, where the first page, the second page, and the third page are all different ones of the pages of the less-fine-grained memory;
• and
• maintaining a map comprising a plurality of entries, each of the entries associating a respective one of a plurality of elements with a respective one of the logical partitions of a respective one of the pages of the less-fine-grained memory, and where prior to the writing, a first one of the elements is associated with the first logical partition via a first one of the entries of the map, and a second one of the elements is associated with the second logical partition via a second one of the entries of the map.