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:
Jul. 23, 2013
Filed:
Jul. 18, 2011
Rahul N. Iyer, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Garth R. Goodson, Fremont, CA (US);
Rahul N. Iyer, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Garth R. Goodson, Fremont, CA (US);
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
Described herein are method and apparatus for performing wear leveling of erase-units of an LLRRM device that considers all active erase-units. Wear counts of all active erase-units (containing client data) and free erase-units (not containing client data) are tracked. Wear counts are used to determine low-wear active erase-units having relatively low wear counts and high-wear free erase-units having relatively high wear counts. In some embodiments, data contents of low-wear active erase-units are transferred to high-wear free erase-units, whereby the low-wear active erase-units are converted to free erase-units and may later store different client data which may increase the current rate of wear for the erase-unit. The high-wear free erase-units are converted to active erase-units that store client data that is infrequently erased/written, which may reduce the current rate of wear for the erase-unit. As such, wear is spread more evenly among erase-units of the LLRRM device.