Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory – Storage accessing and control – Memory configuring
Patent
1997-09-16
2000-11-07
Chan, Eddie P.
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory
Storage accessing and control
Memory configuring
711161, 711173, 341 50, 341 55, H03M 700, H03M 730, G06F 1200
Patent
active
061450685
ABSTRACT:
To improve the speed of transition to the zero-volt suspend state, system context is saved from volatile random access memory to non-volatile memory, such as a hard disk, using a compression algorithm which speeds the transfer of data to non-volatile memory by recognizing data pages having bytes of a single value. The system context in extended memory of RAM consists of a number of system context memory blocks, and between these memory blocks are memory holes containing information which does not require storage. Initially, the entirety of data in a buffer region of RAM is stored directly to disk. Then, successive pages from each system context memory block are transferred to the buffer, where the page size corresponds to the memory management unit page size. When testing locates a region of heterogeneous entries, then a heterogeneous-data flag, the length of the heterogeneous region, and the heterogeneous data region are transferred to the buffer. When testing determines that a page contains bytes of a single value, then a compression flag representing that value is substituted for that page. When a memory hole is reached, a memory hole flag and the size of the memory hole are transferred to the buffer. On each transfer of a byte of data to the buffer it is determined whether the buffer is full, and when it is full then a write-to-disk is performed. To transition from the zero-volt suspend state back to an operational state, bytes are transferred from the hard disk to the buffer whenever all the bytes currently in the buffer have been transferred to extended memory. When testing of the buffer entries locates a heterogeneous-data flag, the value immediately following the flag is determined, and a data region having a length of that value is transferred to extended memory. When a compression flag is found, a 4 kilobyte page of the corresponding byte value is transferred to extended memory. When a memory hole flag is found, a memory hole with a length of the value immediately following the memory hole flag is created in extended memory.
REFERENCES:
patent: 2922840 (1960-01-01), Lally
patent: 3588329 (1971-06-01), Monk
patent: 3656178 (1972-04-01), De Maine et al.
patent: 4366505 (1982-12-01), Tsuda et al.
patent: 4543611 (1985-09-01), Kurahayashi
patent: 4682241 (1987-07-01), Adachi
patent: 5291600 (1994-03-01), Lutz et al.
patent: 5408542 (1995-04-01), Callahan
patent: 5448719 (1995-09-01), Schultz et al.
patent: 5459850 (1995-10-01), Clay et al.
patent: 5481701 (1996-01-01), Chambers, IV
patent: 5511202 (1996-04-01), Combs et al.
patent: 5530877 (1996-06-01), Hanaoka
patent: 5548763 (1996-08-01), Combs et al.
patent: 5551043 (1996-08-01), Crump et al.
patent: 5553238 (1996-09-01), Nelson
patent: 5559978 (1996-09-01), Spilo
patent: 5560023 (1996-09-01), Crump et al.
patent: 5563920 (1996-10-01), Fimoff et al.
patent: 5564037 (1996-10-01), Lam
patent: 5574906 (1996-11-01), Morris
patent: 5577248 (1996-11-01), Chambers, IV
patent: 5588069 (1996-12-01), Katayama et al.
patent: 5603038 (1997-02-01), Crump et al.
patent: 5604889 (1997-02-01), Pickens et al.
patent: 5617532 (1997-04-01), Ushiyama
patent: 5617552 (1997-04-01), Garber et al.
patent: 5720029 (1998-02-01), Kern et al.
patent: 5861959 (1999-01-01), Barak
"Hybernating and Resuming a Compressed Memory Image", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, vol. 38, No. 8, Aug. 1995, p. 73.
"Automatic Data Compression Control for Hibernation", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, vol. 39, No. 4, Apr. 1996; pp. 185-186.
Wu, et al., Recoverable Distributed Shred Virtual Memory: Memory Coherence and Storage Structures, 19.sup.th International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing, IEEE Computer Society, Press, 1989, pp. 520-527.
Brookstein, et al., Flexible Compression for Bitmap Sets, DCC'91 Data Compression Conference, Los Alamitos, CA, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1991, pp. 402-410.
Douglis, Fred, The Compression Cache: Using On-line Compression to Extend Physical Memory, 1993 Winter USENIX-January 25-29, 1993, San Diego, CA, pp. 519-529.
Hauser, Speeding Up UNIX Login by Caching the Initial Environment, 1994 LISA-Sep. 19-23, 1994, San Diego, CA, pp. 117-124.
Kambayashi, et al., Data compression procedures utilizing the similarity of data, AFIPS 1981 National Computer Conference, May 4-7, 1981, Chicago, IL, pp. 555-562.
Kjelso, et al., Memory Management in Flash-Memory Disks with Data Compression, Memory Management International Workshop IWMM 95, Sep. 27-29, 1995 Kinross, UK., pp. 399-413.
Taunton, Compressed Executables: an Exercise in Small Thinking, USENIX-Summer 1991, Nashville, TN, pp. 385-402.
Wang, et al., Vector Run-length Coding of Bi-level Images, DCC'92 Data Compression Conference, Los Alamitos, CA, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1992, pp. 289-298.
Williams, An Extremely Fast ZIV-Lempel Data Compression Algorithm, DCC'91 Data Compression Conference, Los Alamitos, CA, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1991, pp. 362-371.
Wolfe, et al., Executing Compressed Programs on an Embedded RISC Architecture, 25.sup.th Annual International Symposium on Microarchitecture MICRO, Dec. 1-4, 1992, Portland, OR, 1992, pp. 81-91.
Chan Eddie P.
Encarnacion Yamir
Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
LandOfFree
Data transfer to a non-volatile storage medium does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Data transfer to a non-volatile storage medium, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Data transfer to a non-volatile storage medium will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-1652584