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. 24, 2015
Filed:
Dec. 14, 2012
Ho-fan Kang, San Diego, CA (US);
Ho-Fan Kang, San Diego, CA (US);
Virtium Technology, Inc, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA (US);
Abstract
N page counters are associated with N blocks in the flash subsystem. Each of the N page counters indicates a count of invalid pages in each corresponding block in the N blocks. A max heap structure is formed over the N page counters. At least one of the N page counters is updated each time the count changes. The max heap structure is updated each time the at least one of the N page counters is updated. A maximum value is retrieved from a highest level of the max heap structure. The max heap structure is traversed down to lowest level using the maximum value at each level until reaching the lowest level. The lowest level corresponds to N page counters. One of the N blocks having associated page counter corresponds to the maximum value is identified as a candidate for block erasure.