Intel Corporation

Amber D Huffman

Knut Stener Grimsrud

Robert J Royer, Jr

Chai Huat Gan

Daniel Nemiroff

Eng Hun Ooi

Suryaprasad Kareenahalli

James A Boyd

Thomas J Barnes

Vincent J Zimmer

Michael A Rothman

Glenn J Hinton

Sanjeev N Trika

Howard C Herbert

Frank T Hady

Robert W Strong

Rajeev K Nalawadi

Nimrod Diamant

Moshe Maor

Dale J Juenemann

Jeffrey L Rabe

Carey W Smith

R Scott Tetrick

Geetani R Edirisooriya

John P Lee

Oscar P Pinto

Brian Dees

Serge Bedwani

Soon Seng Seh

Siang Lin Tan

Scott Burridge

Scott R Tetrick

Jasper Balraj

Robert J Rover, Jr

Fran Corrado

A mass storage device such as a disk drive or SSD (solid state drive) employs optimization logic for reduced power consumption in a host personal electronic device that identifies and prioritizes performance and power trade-offs by considering user expectations, user presence and application responsiveness. The storage device receives commands and information from the host device indicative of user expectations about application invocation, data freshness, and usage patterns, and determines a operational state indicative of behavior settings for reducing power consumption while maintaining the performance constraints required by the user expectations. The granularity of performance considerations communicated from the host device to the mass storage device is expanded to permit the storage device to determine, based on performance constraints from user expectations, appropriate and specific power reduction measures for maintaining the user experience.

Method and apparatus for controlling a storage device

Methods and systems for queuing transfers of multiple non-contiguous address ranges within a single command are disclosed. Embodiments of systems include system processors, memory to store data and executable software, and storage devices to receive transfer commands stored in system memory. A host controller interface driver is executed by one or more system processors and collects multiple non-continuous address ranges from storage-device transfer requests and records starting addresses and quantities of data to transfer for each non-continuous range in a tagged command list. It records the number of address ranges in the tagged command list, and a tagged-transfer opcode in a command, and stores the command and the tagged command list in a command table for the storage device. It records a base address for the command table in memory and an offset for the tagged command list into a command header, which is stored in a command queue.

Method and system for queuing transfers of multiple non-contiguous address ranges with a single command

A system and method of controlling a flash memory device such as a NAND memory device may involve receiving a command to execute an operation. A Ready/Busy contact of the memory device may be pulsed low in response to determining that execution of the operation has completed.

Repurposing NAND ready/busy pin as completion interrupt

Systems and methods of managing computing system restore points may include an apparatus having logic to receive a command to start a restore point for a solid state drive (SSD). The logic may also conduct a context drop of an indirection table from a volatile memory of the SSD to a non-volatile memory of the SSD in response to the command to start the restore point.

Drive assisted system checkpointing via system restore points

A host device and a storage device with a Serial ATA (SATA) architecture to independently transition to a deeper low power state after first entering an initial low power state without first transitioning to the Active state. The transition from the Partial state to the Slumber state is direct and the transition may be enabled, but not negotiated through a handshaking process.

Serial ATA (SATA) power optimization through automatic deeper power state transition

A method and system to perform caching based at least on one or more file-level heuristics. The caching of a storage medium in a caching device is performed by a cache policy engine. The cache policy engine receives file-level information of input/output access of data of the storage medium and caches or evicts the data of the storage medium in the caching device based on the received file-level information. By utilizing information about the files and file operations associated with the disk sectors or logical block addresses of the storage medium, the cache policy engine can make a better decision on the data selection of the storage medium to be cached in or evicted from the caching device in one embodiment of the invention. Higher cache hit rates can be achieved and the performance of the system utilizing the cache policy engine is improved.

Method and system to perform caching based on file-level heuristics

Methods and apparatuses for identifying types of data streams and communicating stream information to improve performance of data storage devices are disclosed. Method embodiments generally comprise identifying one or more isochronous requests among a plurality of requests which may be issued to a data storage device, assigning a completion deadline an isochronous request, and communicating the isochronous request and completion deadline information to the data storage device. Apparatus embodiments generally comprise a request identifier to identify an isochronous request, a logic module to assign a completion deadline to the isochronous request, and a communication module to communicate the isochronous request and the completion deadline to a data storage device. Alternative apparatus embodiments may include a monitor module to monitor a system process operating in the system and determine if the system process issues isochronous requests. Various embodiments may process asynchronous requests, including prioritized asynchronous requests, with the isochronous requests.

Data storage device performance optimization methods and apparatuses

A system and method for a virtualization aware hard drive. A method may include issuing a context command and an input/output (I/O) command by a virtual machine to either a hardware controller or a virtual machine monitor (VMM). The controller (or VMM) fills in a context tag that corresponds to the context command and the I/O command. The controller (or VMM) provides the context tag and the I/O command to a virtualization aware hard drive. The context tag provides context to the hard drive for the I/O command. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Virtualization aware hard drive

An apparatus and method for serial link down detection are described. In one embodiment, the method includes the detection of an initial link down condition of a serial link. In one embodiment, the initial link down condition is detected, for example, when a transition from a normal signaling voltage level to a squelch signaling voltage level is detected at a receiver input. When an initial link down condition is detected, the issuance of a link down signal is delayed for a predetermined period of time from the detection of the squelch voltage over the serial link. In one embodiment, the link down signal is asserted if a data error is detected following the predetermined period of time from the detection of the squelch voltage. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Method and apparatus for serial link down detection

Methods and arrangements to handle non-queued commands for data storage devices, such as Parallel and Serial ATA hard drives, are disclosed. Embodiments may comprise a host and/or a data storage device. The host and data storage device may form, e.g., a handheld device such as an MP3 player, a cellular phone, or the like. The storage device may comprise a new method of responding to a non-queued command while the storage device may be processing a queue of commands. In many embodiments, the method involves processing queued commands until the drive receives a non-queued command that requires immediate processing by the drive. In many of these embodiments, the drive will respond in a new manner to process the non-queued command, the end result having no or minimal impact on host system operation.

Methods and arrangements to handle non-queued commands for data storage devices

Methods and arrangements to remap degraded storage blocks on, e.g., IDE/ATA drives are disclosed. Embodiments may comprise a host and/or a data storage device for, e.g., a handheld device. The host may comprise remapping logic. In many embodiments, the remapping logic may track degraded storage blocks as indicated by the data storage device. In several embodiments, the host may remap data from degraded storage blocks in response to indications from the data storage device that the degraded storage blocks have degraded to a point at which further use may risk loss of data. The data storage device may execute error correction code to acquire valid data and if error correction measures exceed a threshold, or are otherwise determined to be excessive, the data storage device may communicate the degradation of the storage block to the host. Other embodiments may be disclosed and claimed.

Methods and arrangements to remap degraded storage blocks

A computer system is disclosed. The computer system includes a storage device, a device controller and a chipset. The device controller includes lock registers having values that correspond to the ranges of locked sectors of the storage device. The lock registers verify if a storage device access request is targeted for ranges of sectors of the storage device that are locked. The chipset includes an embedded controller to authenticate the storage device access request and to manage configuration of the storage device.

Mechanism to control access to a storage device

A method and apparatus for detecting a presence of a fail over switch is described. In one embodiment, during an Serial ATA sequence initialization handshake, a host transmits a COMRESET to a device. In return, the host receives a COMWAKE from the device. If the host is of a first type of host, then the host identifies a presence of a fail over switch, in response to receipt of the COMWAKE. If the host is of a second type of host, then the host ignores the COMWAKE. The host then receives a COMINIT from the device, in accordance with the Serial ATA sequence handshake. The host transmits a COMWAKE to the device, and the host receives a COMWAKE in return from the device.

Growing community of inventors

Banks, OR, United States of America

Amber D Huffman