Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

Yung-Li Ji

Haining Liu

Ming-Yu Tai

Yun-Tzuo Lai

Subhash Balakrishna Pillai

A method of wear leveling receives a write request. The write request indicates received data to be written to memory blocks. The method detects a system condition. Example system conditions include a random write condition, a garbage collection start condition, and/or a sequential write condition. Based on the system condition, the method determines whether the received data comprises hot data or cold data. Some embodiments use a write amplification value to determine the system condition. If the received data comprises hot data, the method writes the received data to a cold block. If the received data comprises cold data, the method writes the received data to a hot block.

Memory apparatus and methods thereof for write amplification aware wear leveling

A method, system, and apparatus are provided for retiring computer memory blocks. Two overall schemes are provided for separating poorly functioning blocks from normally functioning blocks. In a first scheme, after data relocation is finished, firmware remembers the old physical memory block. As soon as the system writes to the old physical memory block with new data, firmware issues a read again and receives back a count of error bits. If the returned error bits are still high, then the system identifies the block as being weak and retires the block. In a second scheme, firmware tracks statistics for data relocates, block reads, activity timers, among other statistics. If some blocks have abnormal activities (e.g., too many data relocates, too many reads, etc.), then the system may identify the block as being weak and may retire the physical memory block.

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Yung-Li Ji