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.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 17, 1996
Filed:
Dec. 23, 1994
Jeffrey M Lasker, Marlboro, MA (US);
James M McGillis, Franklin, MA (US);
EMC Corporation, Hopkinton, MA (US);
Abstract
A disk storage subsystem includes both volatile and non-volatile portions of memory. In response to a write command from a host computer, the controller allocates a predetermined number of memory blocks in the non-volatile cache memory and allocates a corresponding number of blocks in the volatile memory. Host supplied write data is then stored in the allocated non-volatile memory blocks. The data may also be mirrored in additional non-volatile memory. Immediately thereafter the subsystem sends an acknowledge signal to the host. The subsystem then performs a DMA operation to copy the write-data from the non-volatile memory blocks to the volatile memory blocks. The write-data is then stored on a disk drive at which point the non-volatile memory may be de-allocated. Subsequent reads of the given data may be read from the volatile memory, reducing disk access time. In the event of a power failure, data stored in the non-volatile memory but not yet written to disk is preserved. In the event of a disk controller failure, the non-volatile memory modules may be transferred to a functioning disk controller for recovery.