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:
Aug. 07, 2007
Filed:
Oct. 17, 2002
Trevor James Briggs, Rochester, MN (US);
Adam Michael Espeseth, Rochester, MN (US);
Robert Anton Steinbach, Rochester, MN (US);
Christopher David Wiederholt, Rochester, MN (US);
Trevor James Briggs, Rochester, MN (US);
Adam Michael Espeseth, Rochester, MN (US);
Robert Anton Steinbach, Rochester, MN (US);
Christopher David Wiederholt, Rochester, MN (US);
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Netherlands B.V., Amsterdam, NL;
Abstract
A method and apparatus is provided which reduces the equipment and time requirements for hard disk drive performance testing during manufacturing. This invention executes self-contained performance testing code that resides within the drive's manufacturing firmware, rather than relying on external testers. The invention involves exercising the drive's enqueue, dequeue, and command execution firmware, as well as the physical process of reading and writing data by simulating the host interface in code. The invention enqueues commands that typify the desired workload, allows a command ordering algorithm to sort the commands for execution, and allows the drive side code to execute the commands just as if an external host interface were attached. The invention is advantageous because the performance testing can be done by only applying power to the drive. The present invention also lends itself to performance tuning that can be done in manufacturing, to reduce drive-to-drive performance variations.