IBM Assigned Patent

IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., has been assigned a patent (8,250,324) developed by Robert Haas, Xiao-Yu Hu and Roman A. Pletka, Rueschlikon, Switzerland, for a "method to efficiently locate meta-data structures on a flash-based storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A method for facilitating fast reconstruction of metadata structures on a memory storage device includes writing a plurality of checkpoints holding a root of metadata structures in an increasing order of timestamps to a plurality of blocks respectively on the memory storage device utilizing a memory controller, where each checkpoint is associated with a timestamp, and wherein the last-written checkpoint contains a root to the latest metadata information from where metadata structures are reconstructed."

The patent application was filed on Nov. 30, 2009 (12/627,414).