Techniques of maintaining logical to physical mapping information in non-volatile memory systems
AssigneeSanDisk Technologies LLC
InventorsSergey Anatolievich Gorobets, Robert George Young
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A non-volatile memory system writes logical to physical conversion data to the same memory blocks as user data, and as part of the same page as a segment of user data, as data segments are received and written. When a data block is subsequently compacted and obsolete data removed, the user data from the block is written to a one block and some or all of the logical to physical conversion data from the block is written to another block dedicated for the storage of such logical to physical mapping data.
Claims8
A method of operating a memory system that includes a memory circuit having an array of non-volatile memory cells and a controller circuit, the controller overseeing the transfer of user data between a host and the memory array and managing the storage of user data on the memory array, the method comprising:
- receiving from the host at the controller one or more segments of user data identified by a respective logical address;
- assigning by the controller of a respective physical address in a first block of the memory array to each of the segments of user data;
- maintaining by the controller of a mapping of the correspondence between the respective logical and physical addresses for each of the segments of user data;
- writing a first set of one or more of the segments of user data as a plurality of write pages to the corresponding assigned physical addresses in the first block of the memory array;
- writing the logical to physical mapping for the first set of segments of user data to a write page of the first block, wherein the logical to physical mapping includes the logical to physical mapping of one or more of the segments of user data written to the first block prior to writing the logical to physical mapping thereto;
- and
- subsequently performing a data consolidation operation including:
- consolidating segments of the first set of segments of user data from the first block into a second block;
- and
- writing the logical to physical mapping for the consolidated segments of the first set of segments to a third block dedicated to storing logical to physical mappings.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.