Error detection/correction and fault detection/recovery – Pulse or data error handling – Digital data error correction
Reexamination Certificate
1998-02-24
2003-07-29
Baker, Stephen M. (Department: 2133)
Error detection/correction and fault detection/recovery
Pulse or data error handling
Digital data error correction
Reexamination Certificate
active
06601211
ABSTRACT:
THE FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to memory systems employed in computer systems, and in particular to nonvolatile memory systems, such as flash memory systems designed to emulate magnetic disk drive systems.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
It is conventional to implement a memory system in an integrated circuit including an array of nonvolatile memory cells, such as flash memory cells, and circuitry for independently erasing selected blocks of the nonvolatile memory cells. A flash memory array circuit includes rows and columns of nonvolatile flash memory cells. Thus, each of the cells or storage locations of the flash memory array circuit are indexed by a row index and a column index.
Each column of cells of the flash memory array include n memory cells with each cell being implemented with a floating-gate n-channel transistor. The drains of all transistors of a column are connected to a bit line, and the gate of each of the transistors is connected to a different word line. The sources of the transistors are held at a source potential, such as ground, during a read or programming operation. Each memory cell is a nonvolatile memory cell since the transistor of each cell has a floating gate capable of semipermanent charge storage. The current drawn by each cell depends on the amount of charge stored on the cell's floating gate. Thus, the charge stored on each floating gate determines a data value that is stored semipermanently in the corresponding cell. In a flash memory device, the charge stored on the floating gate of each cell is erasable by appropriately changing the voltage applied to the gate and source in a manner known in the art.
Typically, the cells of a flash memory array can be erased in blocks, such as boot blocks or sector-array blocks, or the entire integrated circuit chip can be erased at once using a bulk erase. Reads and writes are, however, typically performed on a random byte or word basis in conventional flash memory devices.
An example of a flash memory array is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/606,246, entitled “SEGMENTED NON-VOLATILE MEMORY ARRAY WITH MULTIPLE SOURCES WITH IMPROVED WORD LINE CONTROL CIRCUITRY,” filed on Feb. 23, 1996 and assigned to the assignee of the present application, which is herein incorporated by reference.
Flash memory systems have been employed to emulate magnetic disk drive systems. Typically, the flash memory system is implemented as a card for insertion into a computer system with a chip set mounted on the card. The chip set includes an onboard control and several memory chips controlled by the controller. Each memory chip implements an array of flash memory cells organized into independently erasable blocks.
Magnetic hard disk systems have dominated storage media for computers and related systems due to the low cost and high capacity of available magnetic hard disk systems. Consequently, virtually all computer systems use and support magnetic hard disk technology. For example, the dominant computer operating system is the DOS or disk operating system, which essentially is a software package used to manage a magnetic hard disk system. The DOS software was developed to support the physical characteristics of hard drive structures based on a supporting file structure having heads, cylinders, and sectors to facilitate storing and retrieving of data from the magnetic hard disk drive.
Magnetic hard disk drives operate by storing polarities on magnetic material which can be rewritten quickly and as often as desired. As a result, DOS uses a file structure that stores files at a given location which is updated by a rewrite of that location as information is changed. Essentially all locations in DOS are viewed as fixed and do not change over the life of a disk drive. Locations are easily updated by rewrites of the smallest supported block of the structure or a sector. In magnetic disk drives, a sector typically is referred to as 512 bytes of data where each byte includes 8 bits of data. DOS also employs clusters as a storage unit, which are merely logical groupings of sectors to form a more efficient way of storing files and tracking the files with less overhead.
Development of flash memory integrated circuits has permitted a new technology to offer an alternative to magnetic hard disk drives and offer advantages and capabilities that are difficult to support by hard disk drive characteristics and features. The low power, high ruggedness, and small sizes offered by solid state flash memory systems make such flash memory systems an attractive alternative to a magnetic hard disk drive system. Although a memory system implemented with flash memory technology may be more costly than a magnetic hard disk drive system, computers and other processing systems are currently being developed that take advantage of flash memory features.
Flash memory systems that emulate the storage characteristics of a magnetic hard disk drive preferably are structured to support storage of 512 byte blocks or sectors along with additional storage for overhead associated with mass storage, such as error correction code (ECC) bits and/or redundant bits. Typically, the flash memory array is made to respond to a host processor in a manner that looks similar to a magnetic disk assembly so that the operating system can store and retrieve data in a known manner and be easily integrated into a computer system including the host processor.
One approach to make a flash memory easily integratable into a host computer is to configure the flash memory as a storage array, and to load special software into the host to translate conventional operating system commands, such as DOS commands, into flash commands and procedures for assertion to the flash memory. This approach uses the host computing power to act as a controller for utility that manages the flash memory rather than including such a controller in the flash memory itself.
A second approach to make a flash memory easily integratable into a host computer is to make the interface to the flash memory essentially identical to a conventional interface to a conventional magnetic hard disk drive. This approach has been adopted by the PCMCIA standardization committee which has promulgated a standard for supporting flash memory systems with a hard disk drive protocol. A flash memory card including one or more flash memory array chips and having an interface meeting this PCMCIA standard can be plugged into a host system having a standard DOS operating system with a PCMCIA-ATA (or standard ATA) interface. Such a flash memory card is designed to match standard interfaces, but must include an onboard controller which manages each flash memory array independent of the host system.
The second approach has several advantages. First, there are no special system requirements for the host system, which permits ease of host system design. No extra memory is required in the host, which allows for better use of the host memory. In addition, the flash memory system runs independently of the host to free the host computer to do other tasks while the flash memory is storing or retrieving data from a flash memory array. The second approach does, however, require a controller onboard the flash memory to implement the equivalent of an operating system behind the PCMCIA interface.
In flash memory systems other than disk-emulation flash memory systems, typically an entire memory is written or erased or an entire decode block is written or erased at one time. In a disk-emulation system, however, the data is typically very dynamic and small portions of memory, such as individual rows of flash memory cells, are rewritten many times while other small portions of memory remain unchanged. In updating data, the controller writes data to free locations, such as rows of flash memory cells, and the memory is updated by the controller writing the new or updated data to other free rows not previously written, marking the previously written rows as old or obsolete and ready to be erased. The flash memory syst
Baker Stephen M.
Schwegman Lundberg Woessner & Kluth P.A.
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