Radian Memory Systems Assigned Patent
Cooperative flash memory control
By Francis Pelletier | June 20, 2017 at 2:14 pmRadian Memory Systems, Inc., Calabasas, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,652,376) developed by Kuzmin, Andrey V., Moscow, Russia, Jadon, Mike, Manhattan Beach, CA, and Mathews, Richard M., Porter Ranch, CA, for a “cooperative flash memory control.“
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “This disclosure provides for host-controller cooperation in managing NAND flash memory. The controller maintains information for each erase unit which tracks memory usage. This information assists the host in making decisions about specific operations, for example, initiating garbage collection, space reclamation, wear leveling or other operations. For example, metadata can be provided to the host identifying whether each page of an erase unit has been released, and the host can specifically then command each of consolidation and erase using direct addressing. By redefining host-controller responsibilities in this manner, much of the overhead association with FTL functions can be substantially removed from the memory controller, with the host directly specifying physical addresses. This reduces performance unpredictability and overhead, thereby facilitating integration of solid state drives, (SSDs) with other forms of storage. The disclosed techniques are especially useful for direct-attached and/or network-attached storage.“
The patent application was filed on February 14, 2013 (13/767,723).