Erase block data splitting
AssigneeMicron Technology, Inc.
InventorsDavid Eggleston, Anthony Moschopoulos, Michael Murray, Brady Keays
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A Flash memory device, system, and data handling routine is detailed with a distributed erase block sector user/overhead data scheme that splits the user data and overhead data and stores them in differing associated erase blocks. The erase blocks of the Flash memory are arranged into associated erase block pairs in “super blocks” such that when user data is written to/read from the user data area of a sector of an erase block of the super block pair, the overhead data is written to/read from the overhead data area of a sector of the other associated erase block. This data splitting enhances fault tolerance and reliability of the Flash memory device.
Claims47
A non-volatile memory system comprising:
- at least one non-volatile memory device, wherein the at least one non-volatile memory device contains a memory array with a plurality of non-volatile memory cells arranged in a plurality of erase blocks, and wherein each erase block of the plurality of erase blocks contains a plurality of sectors, and each sector contains a user data area and an overhead data area;
- and
- a control circuit adapted to control data accesses to a selected non-volatile memory device of the at least one non-volatile memory devices such that each user data access and overhead data access of a sector access are directed to differing erase blocks of the selected non-volatile memory device.
A non-volatile memory device comprising:
- a memory array containing a plurality of non-volatile memory cells arranged into a plurality of sectors in a plurality of erase blocks, each sector containing a user data area and an overhead area;
- and
- wherein the non-volatile memory device is adapted to execute a data access to the memory array such that a user data area of a selected first sector of a first erase block also accesses an overhead data area of an associated first sector of a second erase block.
A method of operating a non-volatile memory system comprising:
- accessing a user data area of a sector of an erase block of a plurality of erase blocks of a selected non-volatile memory device of the one or more non-volatile memory devices;
- and
- concurrently accessing an overhead data area of a sector of an associated erase block of the plurality of erase blocks from the selected non-volatile memory device.
A method of operating a non-volatile memory device comprising:
- accessing a user data area of a sector of an erase block of a plurality of erase blocks of a non-volatile memory array;
- and
- accessing an overhead data area of a sector of an associated erase block of the plurality of erase blocks in response to accessing the user data area of the erase block.
A method of operating a non-volatile memory device comprising:
- accessing a user data area of a sector of a first erase block of a super block of a plurality of super blocks of a memory array, wherein each super block contains at least two erase blocks;
- and
- concurrently accessing an associated overhead data area of a sector of a second erase block of the super block.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.