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AssigneeSanDisk Corporation
InventorsAlan David Bennett, Alan Douglas Bryce, Sergey Anatolievich Gorobets
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The present invention presents a number of improvements for managing erase processes in non-volatile memory. Such memory systems typically manage the memory by logically organize the basic unit of physical erase (erase block) into composite logical groupings (meta-blocks or logical group), where an erase block generally consists of a number of sectors. When an erase command is received, the specified sectors are checked against the memory system's control data. If the specified sectors span any full logical grouping, the full logical groupings can each be treated as a whole and erased according to one process (such as performing a true, physical erase), while other sectors are “logically” erased at the sector level by standard techniques.
A method of operating a non-volatile memory system comprising a controller circuit and a non-volatile flash memory circuit, where the non-volatile memory circuit is formed of a plurality of erase blocks each having one or more sectors, each sector comprising a plurality of individually programmable non-volatile memory cells and including a portion for user data portion and a portion for header data, the method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.