Cera M Gmbh

Lawrence M Fullerton

William D Miller

Gary L Harrington

E J Weldon, Jr

Christopher M Bellman

A computer using virtual memory management employs a random-access type storage device such as a semiconductor memory for page swapping. The semiconductor memory is formatted to provide multiple partitions of varying block size, e.g., two block sizes, for compressed pages, and another block size for uncompressed original-sized pages. The data to be stored is in pages of fixed size, and these pages are compressed for storage if the compressed size fits in the block size of one of the small-block partitions in the memory. If a data page is not compressible to one of the small block sizes, it is stored uncompressed in the other full-size partition. The operating system maintains a table storing the locations of the pages in the partitions, so upon recall the page (if compressed) is retrieved from its location found using the table, decompressed and sent to the CPU. The relative number of blocks in the partitioned memory (e.g., the physical storage capacity of the memory) is set (or dynamically allocated) at the average ratio of compressible pages to uncompressible pages for the compression algorithm used. For example, an algorithm may compress 90% of the pages to either 50% or 70% of their original size, so a ratio of the number of locations in the compressed partitions of the semiconductor memory to the number of locations in the uncompressed partition is selected as 90:10. The compression mechanism operates on bytes in bit-parallel format, and uses a lookahead buffer which is compared with bytes in a window to produce 9-bit symbols. The stream of 9-bit symbols passes through an ECC generator, also operating in bit-parallel.

Solid-state RAM data storage for virtual memory computer using

A random-access type storage device such as a hard disk or semiconductor memory is formatted to provide multiple partitions of varying block size. The data to be stored is in blocks of fixed size, and these blocks are compressed if the compressed size fits in the block size of a small-block partition in the storage device. If a data block is not compressible to the small block size, it is stored uncompressed in another of the partitions. The memory device also contains a table storing the locations of the blocks in the partitions, so upon recall the block is retrieved from location, decompressed (if it had been compressed), and sent to the CPU. For example, there may be two partitions, one using the block size of the original (uncompressed) data, and the other having a block size corresponding to the typical compressed size of the blocks of data (perhaps one-half the size of the original data blocks). The relative number of blocks in each partition (e.g., the physical storage capacity of each partition) is set at the average ratio of compressible blocks to uncompressible blocks for the compression algorithm used. For example, an algorithm may compress 90% of the blocks to 50% of their original size, so a ratio of the number of blocks in the compressed partition to the number of blocks in the uncompressed partition is selected as 90:10.

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Chandler, AZ, United States of America

Lawrence M Fullerton