Apple Assigned Patent

Apple, Inc., Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,259,506) developed by Naftali Sommer, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel, and Uri Perlmutter, Raanana, Israel, for "database of memory read thresholds."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A method for data storage includes storing multiple sets each including one or more read thresholds for use in reading data from a plurality of analog memory cells. The memory cells are arranged in multiple erasure blocks each including multiple pages, and each set of read thresholds is associated with a respective page in one of the erasure blocks. A first page, which belongs to a given erasure block and is not associated with any of the stored sets of read thresholds, is read by retrieving a stored set of read thresholds that is associated with a second page in the given erasure block, adapting the retrieved set of read thresholds to match the first page, and reading the first page using the adapted set of read thresholds."

The patent application was filed on March 22, 2010 (12/728,296).