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:
Jun. 28, 2011
Filed:
Jul. 30, 2009
Carlos J. Gonzalez, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Alan Douglas Bryce, Edinburgh, GB;
Sergey Anatolievich Gorobets, Edinburgh, GB;
Alan David Bennett, Edinburgh, GB;
Carlos J. Gonzalez, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Alan Douglas Bryce, Edinburgh, GB;
Sergey Anatolievich Gorobets, Edinburgh, GB;
Alan David Bennett, Edinburgh, GB;
SanDisk Corporation, Milpitas, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention presents techniques for the linking of physical blocks of a non-volatile memory into composite logical structures or 'metablocks'. After determining an initial linking of good physical blocks into metablocks, a record of the linking is maintained in the non-volatile memory where it can be readily accessed when needed. In one set of embodiments, the initially linking is deterministically formed according to an algorithm and can be optimized according to the pattern of any bad blocks in the memory. As additional bad blocks arise, the linking is updated using by replacing the bad blocks in a linking with good blocks, preferably in the same sub-array of the memory as the block that they are replacing.