US 6,584,014 B2 · Nonvolatile storage system

Abstract

A nonvolatile storage system includes a plurality of nonvolatile memories and a control unit. When having detected a write-in error that occurred at an operation-subject nonvolatile memory, the control unit can set inter-chip alternate information indicating that a storage region related to the write-in error has been replaced by a storage region of any other nonvolatile memory of the plurality of nonvolatile memories to the nonvolatile memory of the storage region related to this error, so that when having received the inter-chip alternate information from the operation-subject nonvolatile memory, the control unit can change the operation subject from the current operation-subject nonvolatile memory to any other nonvolatile memory indicated by this inter-chip alternate information. It is thus possible to rescue a write-in error which occurred at one nonvolatile memory by replacing it with any other chip.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A nonvolatile storage system comprising a plurality of nonvolatile memories capable of read-out, erasure, and write-in operations and a control unit for controlling the operations of said nonvolatile memories in response to an external request, wherein when having detected a write-in error at any operation-subject one of said plurality of memories, said control unit can set to the nonvolatile memory having a storage region related to said write-in error such inter-chip alternate information indicating that said storage region related to said write-in error has been replaced with a storage region of any other nonvolatile memory of said plurality of memories and also, when having received the inter-chip alternate information from the operation-subject nonvolatile memory, can change the operation subject from the current operation-subject nonvolatile memory to said any other nonvolatile memory indicated by said inter-chip alternate information.

Nonvolatile storage system comprising a control unit and a plurality of nonvolatile memories, wherein:

said control unit receives external data and address information to thereby control storage of said received external data to said plurality of nonvolatile memories, read-out of said external data from said nonvolatile memories, and erasure of said data stored in said nonvolatile memories;
each of said nonvolatile memories responds to an operation instruction sent from said control unit to thereby perform a write-in operation of storing data supplied from said control unit, a read-out operation of reading out the stored data and then supplying said data to said controller, and an erasure operation of erasing the stored data;
said control unit sub-divide said received external data into data portions of a predetermined size to then perform an interleaving operation of supplying a first data portion of the sub-divided data portions to the first nonvolatile memory together with a write-in operation instruction and then supplying a second data portion to the second nonvolatile memory together with the write-in operation instruction while writing the data to said first nonvolatile memory, thus sequentially supplying all of said sub-divided data portions to said plurality of nonvolatile memories respectively;
and
when having detected a write-in error which occurred during writing of predetermined data to any one of said plurality of nonvolatile memories, said control unit controls data storage of supplying said predetermined data together with the write-in operation instruction to each of the nonvolatile memories other than the nonvolatile memory currently involved in the write-in operation and the nonvolatile memories that are made subject to writing of the sub-divided data portion after the occurrence of said write-in error.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Nonvolatile storage system

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Nonvolatile storage system

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Abstract

Claims18