Methods of reliably allocating, de-allocating, re-allocating, and reclaiming objects in a symmetrically blocked nonvolatile memory having a bifurcated storage architecture

Abstract

Methods of reliably allocating, writing, reading, de-allocating, re-allocating, and reclaiming space within a nonvolatile memory having a bifurcated storage architecture are described. Allocation, writing, reading, de-allocating, re-allocating, and reclamation are handled by a memory manager. The memory manager tracks the progress of each process during execution in order to detect whether a selected process was interrupted for purposes of recovery. The nonvolatile memory is recovered to a known state during initialization. Initialization includes the step of determining a recovery state from a recovery state lookup table. A selected recovery process is selected in accordance with the recovery state lookup table. A restart level for the selected process is determined from a corresponding restart state lookup table. The selected process is then restarted at the restart level. In one embodiment, a method of managing a nonvolatile memory includes the step of identifying an interrupted process from at least one of an allocation, a reclamation, a configuration header reclaim, and a re-allocation process initiated on the nonvolatile memory. A recovery process is selected for the interrupted process. An entry point into the recovery process is determined. The selected recovery process is then restarted at the entry point.