Violin Memory Inc.

Violin Systems LLC

Innovations in Memory LLC

Marconi Communications Gmbh

Riverdelta Networks, Inc.

Vsip Holdings LLC

Jon C R Bennett

Daniel Christian Biederman

David M Smith

Donpaul C Stephens

James H Jones

Maxim Adelman

Kevin D Drucker

A data memory system is described, where there may be an asymmetry in the time needed to write or erase data and the time needed to read data. The data may be stored using a RAID data storage arrangement and the reading, writing and erasing operations on the modules arranged such that the erasing and writing operations may be performed without significant latency for performing a read operation. Where a failure of a memory module in the memory system occurs, methods for recovering the data of the failed module are disclosed which may selected in accordance with policies that may relate to the minimizing the possibility of irretrievable data loss, or degradation of latency performance.

Memory system with multiple striping of raid groups and method for performing the same

Memory system with multiple striping of RAID groups and method for performing the same

A memory system and method of operating the same is described, where the memory system is used to store data in a RAIDed manner. The stored data may be retrieved, including the parity data so that the stored data is recovered when the first of either the stored data without the parity data, or the stored data from all but one memory module and the parity data, has been received. The writing of data, for low write data loads, is managed such that only one of the memory modules of a RAID stripe is being written to, or erased, during a time interval.

Memory management system and method

Non-volatile memory systems such as those using NAND FLASH technology have a property that a memory location can be written to only once prior to being erased, and a contiguous group of memory locations need to be erased simultaneously. The process of recovering space that is no longer being used for storage of current data, called garbage collection, may interfere with the rapid access to data in other memory locations of the memory system during the erase period. The effects of garbage collection on system performance may be mitigated by performing portions of the process contemporaneously with the user initiated reading and writing operations. The memory circuits and the data may also be configured such that the data is stored in stripes of a RAID array and the scheduling of the erase operations may be arranged so that the erase operations for garbage collection are hidden from the user operations.

Memory system having persistent garbage collection

An interconnection system, apparatus and method is described for arranging elements in a network, which may be a data memory system, computing system or communications system where the data paths are arranged and operated so as to control the power consumption and data skew properties of the system. A configurable switching element may be used to form the interconnections at nodes, where a control signal and other information is used to manage the power status of other aspects of the configurable switching element. Time delay skew of data being transmitted between nodes of the network may be altered by exchanging the logical and physical line assignments of the data at one or more nodes of the network. A method of laying out an interconnecting motherboard is disclosed which reduces the complexity of the trace routing.

Interconnection system

A memory system is described, where a plurality of memory modules is connected to a memory controller. Erase operations of the memory modules are coordinated by the memory controller such that, when data is stored in a group of memory modules configured to be a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent 'Disks') group, erase or refresh operations performed on the memory modules of the RAID group are synchronized, scheduled, or controlled to reduce the latency in reading the data stored on the RAID modules.

RAIDed memory system management

A system and method for storing compressed data in a memory system includes identifying user data to be compressed and compressing pages of user data to form data extents that are less than or equal to the uncompressed data. A plurality of compressed pages are combined to a least fill a page of the memory. The data may be stored as sectors of a page, where each sector includes a CRC or error correcting code for the compressed data of that sector. The stored data may also include error correcting code data for the uncompressed page and error correcting code for the compressed page. When data is read in response to a user request, the sector data is validated using the CRC prior to selecting the data from the read sectors for decompression, and the error correcting code for the uncompressed page may be used to validate the decompressed data.

Apparatus and method for accessing compressed data

A memory system and a method for managing the system is described. The system is configured such a plurality of system controllers, which may be RAID controllers, receive requests from the external environment and distribute the requests to a plurality of memory modules such that data may be stored in the memory modules. A global sequence number is assigned to the data of a data stripe so that the operations related to the data stripe are performed in an ordered manner so that the data remains consistent. A plurality of system controllers may comprise a domain and access a plurality of memory controllers and a plurality of domains may include at least one common memory module.

RAIDed memory system

A system and method for managing the storage of data in non-volatile memory is described. In an aspect, the data may be described by metadata and a transaction log file that are checkpointed from a volatile memory into the non-volatile memory. Actions that take place between the last checkpointing of a metadata segment and log file segment are discovered by scanning the non-volatile memory blocks, taking account of a record of the highest sector in each block that is known to have been recorded. Any later transactions are discovered and used to update the recovered metadata so that the metadata correctly represents the stored data.

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Sudbury, MA, United States of America

Jon C R Bennett