Starchip Assigned Patent

Starchip SAS, Meyreuil, France, has been assigned a patent (9,286,207) developed by Charbouillot, Samuel, Saint Maximin la Sainte Baume, France, Fusella, Yves, Aubagne, France, and Ricard, Stephane, Bouc Belair, France, for a “method of managing the endurance of non-volatile memories.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”The invention relates to a method for managing the endurance of a data storage system provided with a set of sectors endowed with a guaranteed native endurance capacity, (G), comprising the steps consisting in: –partitioning said data storage system into a plurality of work sectors, and into a plurality of replacement sectors able to form an endurance reservoir, certain of the work sectors being intended to be replaced by replacement sectors when said work sectors are expended after a certain number of programming and/or erasure cycles, –defining an address management area making it possible to retrieve the location of the replacement sectors assigned to expended work sectors, –determining, sector by sector, whether a current work sector is physically expended, and executing a step of replacing this work sector by a replacement sector, only when said current work sector is declared physically expended. This method of managing endurance is in particular characterized in that in order to measure the expenditure of a sector, automatic reading of the quality of erasure of the memory points of the sector with respect to a severized reading criterion, (margin Vref.) is carried out, that is to say one which is more severe than a normal criterion, (Normal Vref.).“

The patent application was filed on June 22, 2012 (14/127,914).