Micron Assigned Patent

Micron Technology, Inc., Boise, ID, has been assigned a patent (8,250,294) developed by Petro Estakhri, Pleasanton, CA, for a "block management for mass storage."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "An embodiment of the present invention includes a nonvolatile memory system comprising nonvolatile memory for storing sector information, the nonvolatile memory being organized into blocks with each block including a plurality of sectors, each sector identified by a logical block address and for storing sector information. A controller is coupled to the nonvolatile memory for writing sector information to the latter and for updating the sector information, wherein upon updating sector information, the controller writes to the next free or available sector(s) of a block such that upon multiple re-writes or updating of sector information, a plurality of blocks are substantially filled with sector information and upon such time, the controller rearranges the updated sector information in sequential order based on their respective logical block addresses thereby increasing system performance and improving manufacturing costs of the controller."

The patent application was filed on Aug. 24, 2011 (13/216,291).