Inter-set wear-leveling for caches with limited write endurance
AssigneeQUALCOMM Incorporated
InventorXiangyu Dong
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A cache controller includes a first register that updates after every memory location swap operation on a number of cache sets in a cache memory and resets every N−1 memory location swap operations. N is a number of the cache sets in the cache memory. The memory controller also has a second register that updates after every N−1 memory location swap operations, and resets every (N2−N) memory location swap operations. The first and second registers track a relationship between logical locations and physical locations of the cache sets.
Claims20
A method for wear-leveling of a cache memory, comprising:
- dynamically rotating cache sets of the cache memory by performing a plurality of memory location swap operations on the cache sets when a number of memory write operations to the cache memory reaches a threshold value, each swap operation including clearing contents from only swapped cache sets, while leaving memory contents of other cache sets intact;
- and
- tracking the swapped cache sets to convert a logical cache set number to a physical cache set number.
A cache controller, comprising:
- a first register that updates after each memory location swap operation on a plurality of cache sets of a cache memory, and resets at each N−1 memory location swap operations, in which N is a number of cache sets in the cache memory;
- and
- a second register that updates after every N−1 memory location swap operations on the plurality of cache sets of the cache memory, and resets every (N2−N) memory location swap operations, in which the first register and the second register track a relationship between logical locations and physical locations of the cache sets.
A cache controller for wear-leveling of a cache memory, comprising:
- means for dynamically rotating cache sets of the cache memory by performing a plurality of memory location swap operations on the cache sets when a number of memory write operations to the cache memory reaches a threshold value, each swap operation including clearing contents from only swapped cache sets, while leaving memory contents of other cache sets intact;
- and
- means for tracking the swapped cache sets to convert a logical cache set number to a physical cache set number.
A method for wear-leveling of a cache memory, comprising:
- the step of dynamically rotating cache sets of the cache memory by performing a plurality of memory location swap operations on the cache sets when a number of memory write operations to the cache memory reaches a threshold value, each swap operation including clearing contents from only swapped cache sets, while leaving memory contents of other cache sets intact;
- and
- the step of tracking the swapped cache sets to convert a logical cache set number to a physical cache set number.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.