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:
Mar. 20, 2012
Filed:
Oct. 29, 2009
Leonard Russo, Tomball, TX (US);
James Kenneth Yates, Houston, TX (US);
Walter Gaspard, Magnolia, TX (US);
Leonard Russo, Tomball, TX (US);
James Kenneth Yates, Houston, TX (US);
Walter Gaspard, Magnolia, TX (US);
Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for improving the performance of a computer system having a solid-state (flash) memory device as the main system memory. After weeks or months of frequent use, solid-state memories can become badly fragmented, and although every memory cell has basically the same access time to retrieve or to write data from or into that cell, vendors have found that self-defragging utilities within the memory device often improves overall performance. Yet if such defragging utilities are automatically run when other applications are running simultaneously, the drain on system performance can be very detrimental. To avoid the occurrence of unwanted self-defragging of these solid-state memory devices, we inhibit under some circumstances such functionality until it is deemed safe to do so.