Patent ID: 6081878
Filing Date: 2000-06-27
Classification: G06F,G11C

Abstract:
A memory storage system for storing information organized in sectors within a nonvolatile memory bank defined by sector store locations spanning across two or more nonvolatile memory devices, each said sector including a user data portion and an overhead portion, said sectors being organized into blocks, each sector identified by a host provided logical block address (LBA) and an actual physical block address (PBA) derived from a virtual PBA, each block being identified by a modified LBA derived from said host-provided LBA and said virtual PBA, said host-provided LBA being received by said storage system from the host for identifying a sector of information to be accessed, said actual PBA developed by said storage system for identifying a free location within said memory bank wherein said accessed sector is to be stored, said storage system comprising:a memory controller coupled to said host; anda nonvolatile memory bank coupled to said memory controller via a memory bus, said memory bank including a first non-volatile semiconductor memory unit and a second non-volatile semiconductor memory unit, said memory bank having storage blocks each of which includes at least one memory row location having a first row-portion located in said first memory unit, and a corresponding second row-portion located in said second memory unit, each said memory row location providing storage space for two of said sectors,wherein the speed of performing write operations is increased by writing sector information to two or more nonvolatile memory devices simultaneously.