Apple Assigned Four Patents

Disk drive with state-information buffer
Apple, Inc., Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,526,259) developed by Thomas R. Colligan, San Jose, CA, for a “disk drive with state-information data buffer.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A HDD is described. During operation of the HDD, measured internal temperatures in the HDD may be stored in a first table, and state information specifying operational states of the HDD associated with ranges of internal temperatures may be stored in a second table. Note that a given operational state in the second table may be associated with a corresponding internal temperature in the first table. Furthermore, during operation of the HDD, the first table and/or the second table may be stored on: a rotatable medium in the HDD, a semiconductor memory in the HDD, or both. This stored table information may facilitate error detection and diagnosis.”

The patent application was filed on April 23, 2012 (13/453,936).

Storage in analog memory cell arrays having erase failures
Apple, Inc., Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,527,819) developed by four co-inventors for a “storage in analog memory cell arrays having erase failures.”

The co-inventors are Ofir Shalvi, Ra’anana, Israel, Shai Winter, Herzliya, Israel, Naftali Sommer, Rishon Lezion, Israel, and Dotan Sokolov, Ra’anana, Israel.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method for storage includes performing an erasure operation on a group of analog memory cells (32). One or more of the memory cells in the group, which failed the erasure operation, are identified as erase-failed cells. A storage configuration that is used for programming the analog memory cells in the group is modified responsively to the identified erase-failed cells. Data is stored in the group of the analog memory cells using the modified storage configuration.”

The patent application was filed on Oct. 12, 2008 (12/677,114).

Storage at M bits/cell density
in N bits/cell analog memory cell devices, M>N
Apple, Inc., Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,547,742) developed by four co-inventors for the “storage at M bits/cell density in N bits/cell analog memory cell devices, M>N.”

The co-inventors are Ofir Shalvi, Ra’anana, Israel, Naftali Sommer, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel, Uri Perlmutter, and Dotan Sokolov, Ra’anana, Israel.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method for storage includes accepting data for storage in a memory that includes multiple analog memory cells and supports a set of built-in programming commands. Each of the programming commands programs a respective page, selected from a group of N pages, in a subset of the memory cells. The subset of the memory cells is programmed to store M pages of the data, M>N, by performing a sequence of the programming commands drawn only from the set.”

The patent application was filed on April 18, 2012 (13/449,326).

Adaptive estimation of memory cell read thresholds
Apple, Inc., Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,547,740) developed by seven co-inventors for the “adaptive estimation of memory cell read thresholds.”

The co-inventors are Naftali Sommer, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel, Ofir Shalvi, Uri Perlmutter, Ra’anana, Israel, Oren Golov, Hod-Hasharon, Israel, Eyal Gurgi, Petah-Tikva, Israel, Micha Anholt, Tel Aviv, Israel, and Dotan Sokolov, Ra’anana, Israel.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A method for operating a memory (28) that includes a plurality of analog memory cells (32) includes storing data in the memory by writing first storage values to the cells. Second storage values are read from the cells, and a Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of the second storage values is estimated. The estimated CDF is processed so as to compute one or more thresholds. A memory access operation is performed on the cells using the one or more thresholds.”

The patent application was filed on Jan. 4, 2013 (13/734,335).