The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.

The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.

Date of Patent:
Sep. 15, 2020

Filed:

Aug. 22, 2018
Applicant:

Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);

Inventors:

Peter Fu, Saratoga, CA (US);

Gregory S. Mathews, Saratoga, CA (US);

Kai Lun Hsuing, Fremont, CA (US);

Shane J. Keil, San Jose, CA (US);

Assignee:

Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);

Attorneys:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 13/00 (2006.01); G11C 11/406 (2006.01); G06F 13/16 (2006.01); G06F 13/10 (2006.01); G06F 13/12 (2006.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
G11C 11/40603 (2013.01); G06F 13/10 (2013.01); G06F 13/12 (2013.01); G06F 13/16 (2013.01); G06F 13/161 (2013.01); G11C 11/40618 (2013.01); G06F 13/1636 (2013.01);
Abstract

A method and apparatus for performing opportunistic refreshes of memory banks is disclosed. Refresh circuitry in a memory controller performs a refresh on each bank of a multi-bank memory at least once during a given refresh interval. At the beginning of an interval, memory banks for which there are no pending transactions (e.g., reads or writes) may be refreshed. During a first portion of the interval, refresh may be skipped for memory banks for which transactions are pending. In a second portion of the interval, refreshes are performed on memory banks that have not been refreshed during the interval, which may cause some memory transactions to be delayed.


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