International Business Machines Corporation

Jyotindra Patel

Anshuman Khandual

Jay W Carman

Marc Avery Gollub

An application can specify reliability values via a communication path between the application and the registers. Application reliability could increase if the application itself could specify the timeout and retry values. For instance, some errors might be prevented if the timeout value is lengthened by a short amount. A longer timeout value would result in slower performance because the memory component could not be accessed during the timeout period. However, resolving errors in memory devices would prevent unrecoverable error indicators from being returned to the application, which would in turn limit application and system crashes. Creating a communication path between the application and the hardware registers would allow the application to modify the reliability of memory operations.

Application reliability and fault tolerant chip configurations

In some example embodiments, a method includes performing a memory scrub of a memory across a scrub cycle of multiple scrub cycles. The method includes identifying correctable errors of symbols in the memory that are a result of accesses from a section of the memory in response to the memory scrub. The method also includes performing an analysis across the multiple scrub cycles, wherein the performing of the analysis comprises determining whether at least two symbols across the multiple scrub cycles have at least one correctable error. The method includes responsive to determining that at least two symbols across the multiple scrub cycles have at least one correctable error, executing at least one repair of the memory that includes the section of memory.

Preemptive memory repair based on multi-symbol, multi-scrub cycle analysis

An apparatus includes a processor, a memory, and an error module operable on the processor. The error module is configured to perform a memory scrub of the memory across a scrub cycle of multiple scrub cycles. The error module is configured to identify correctable errors of symbols in the memory that are a result of accesses from a section of the memory in response to the memory scrub. The error module is configured to perform an analysis across the multiple scrub cycles, wherein the analysis comprises a determination whether at least two symbols across the multiple scrub cycles have at least one correctable error. The error module is configured to responsive to a determination that at least two symbols across the multiple scrub cycles have at least one correctable error, execute at least one repair of the memory that includes the section of memory.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Jyotindra Patel