Patent Abstract:
A method to combine disk drive&#39;s inexpensive large capacity and RAM&#39;s fast access speed to accelerate computer system&#39;s booting speed and application execution speed. Some of the most recently used data will be permanently stored in a large RAM storage with a power source. A controller unit is designed to manage the interface between the RAM storage, disk drive and the computer storage device interface.

Full Description:
CROSS-REFDERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS  
       [0001]    This is a continuation-in-part of pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/699,811 filed Oct. 30, 2000.  
         [0002]    U.S. Pat. No. 5,923,829 Jul. 13, 1999 Ishii  
         [0003]    U.S. Pat. No. 6,016,263 Jan. 18, 2000 Chen  
         [0004]    U.S. Pat. No. 6,070,226 May 30, 2000 Freeman  
         [0005]    U.S. Pat. No. 6,092,149 Jul. 18, 2000 Hicken  
         [0006]    U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,211 Sep. 12, 2000 Kaneko  
         [0007]    U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,907 Sep. 29, 1992 Robbins  
         [0008]    The cache memory book/Jim Handy, 1998 
     
    
     
       FIELD OF THE INVENTION  
         [0009]    The present invention relates to an enhancement of a storage device for use with a computer system.  
         BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
         [0010]    Referring now to FIG. 1 a typical computer system  10  is shown. In such a computer system  10 , because of the physical limitation of the magnetic media and optical media, the access speed of the disk drive  12  is between 0.004 second to 0.1 second. This time frame represents a much slower rate than that of a Central Processing Unit  11  (“CPU”) and the computer system&#39;s Random Access Memory  13  (“RAM”), which operates at access times of in several nanoseconds (i.e., {fraction (1/1,000,000,000)} of a second). The disk drive  12  is therefore the bottleneck of the computer system  10 , as it operates much slower than the CPU  11  and RAM  13 . Sophisticated operating systems and applications require more and more disk storage. It takes minutes to load an operating system and the applications.  
           [0011]    There are some technologies such as advanced disk caching which address some of these issues, but suffer from certain drawbacks. For example. and without limitation, only accessing continuous large blocks of disk data can take advantage of disk caching. Caching or caches consists of a very small amount of high speed SRAM. The content turn-over is very high (almost 100%). It is therefore not intended to store data permanently. Caching does not reduce initial seek time either since any additional data request will be forward to disk drive, whose speed is limited by mechanical rotation of the disk. Another known software technique such as RAMDisk, which uses software to emulate a disk drive with main RAM, improves the speed of accessing temporary data. However when a computer is powered down, the content of the RAMDisk is distorted. RAMDisk also has a very limited size as it is limited by the amount of main memory.  
           [0012]    A RAM Storage device can improve the storage performance significantly. But it is very limited in storage capacity with higher cost and less reliability in the event of battery failure. It requires a special device drive to communicate with the Operating System. Once the RAM storage device is installed in a computer system. It is impossible to remove it or upgrading the computer hardware without losing the data. It cannot be retrofitted into an existing computer system, a new Operating System installation is required.  
           [0013]    Although a disk drive contains gigabytes of data, only a small portion of the data is recently used, such as swap file, temporary file, operating system files, e-mail system, office program, internet browser, etc.  
         SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
         [0014]    It is therefore the primary objective of the present invention to provide a storage controller to create a hybrid storage with the RAM and the disk drive. This will take advantage of the speed of the RAM for most recently used data and the advantage of reliable, in-expensive and large capacity of a disk drive.  
           [0015]    The present invention improves computer system speed by reducing disk drive access time from most recently used data including operating system files, application program files and user data files. The RAM access speed of the present invention ranges from 8 nanoseconds to 70 nanoseconds depending on the type of RAM used. It is about a thousand times faster than the hard disk access speed (4-9 milliseconds). It is about ten thousand times faster than a removable disk like a ZIP disk (29 milliseconds) from Iomega, Inc. It is about hundred thousand times faster than a CD-ROM access speed (200-500 milliseconds).  
           [0016]    The present invention does not replace traditional disk drive storage, it is used in conjunction with the traditional disk drive. It enhances and optimizes the performance of the traditional disk drive by integrating a high speed RAM unit into the interface. It also reduces the frequency of disk drive accesses that results in longer usage life, less power consumption and a more reliable disk drive.  
           [0017]    The present invention can be applied to existing computer systems with a minimum hardware modification and no software modification. This invention can be retrofitted into existing computer systems without installing any additional device drivers and software. It emulates the disk drive&#39;s protocol and sector configuration. Unlike other cache manager software, which require a user to modify the targeted operation system, a hybrid storage device is transparent to any operating system and any program. Since the controller stores data in a form of lowest level sector, it is independent of the file system, which is significantly different from operating system to operating system. Therefore, it can be used in different operating system without modification.  
           [0018]    The present invention is very reliable due to the redundancy of storage and battery backup mechanism. The RAM unit can be added without damage the stored data. The battery can be changed without corrupting the stored data.  
       
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0019]    [0019]FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of a typical prior art computer system.  
         [0020]    [0020]FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of the preferred embodiment of the present invention.  
         [0021]    [0021]FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of the first embodiment of the present invention in use with a computer.  
         [0022]    [0022]FIG. 4 shows a block diagram of an alternate embodiment of the present invention in use with a computer.  
         [0023]    [0023]FIG. 5 shows a block diagram of RAM data block-access table. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION  
       [0024]    Referring now to FIGS. 2 and 3, a hybrid storage controller  106  is provided. Hybrid storage controller  106  is formed of a power source  105 , a controller  101  and a plurality of separate RAM units  103  (collectively referred to as RAM unit or units  104 ). In this preferred embodiment of the invention, hybrid storage controller  106  and main memory or disk drive  102  are integrated into the same device  100 .  
         [0025]    The hybrid storage controller  106  of the present invention comprises is connected to a disk drive  102 . The controller  106  manages the data flowing between the computer system  50 , the RAM  104  and the disk drive  102 . The disk drive  102  is accessed only if the data block that a computer requests is not in the RAM units  104  or when the data block needs to be backed-up to disk drive  102  at a pre-determined period. The present invention significantly reduces the number of “seeks” on the disk drive  102  resulting in faster accessing time and longer disk drive life.  
         [0026]    In order to reduce the RAM  104  to disk drive  102  turn over (i.e., to avoid continuous searches or “seeks” for data from disk drive  102 ), a large amount of RAM  104  is needed within storage controller  106 . In the preferred embodiment of the invention, at least two times of the main memory  12 ,  102  of the main computer system. The RAM  104  stores all the operating system files the current system needs and the virtual memory space that stores operating system and application temporary data. For example and without limitation, currently the average personal computer main memory  12 ,  102  has about 512 Megabytes of storage space, the controller  106  described in this invention must have at least 1 Gigabytes to take advantage of the hybrid architecture. It should be appreciated that the size or ratio of RAM unit  104  storage capacity to main memory  102  size may vary and that the storage capacity of RAM unit  104  should not be construed to be limited by the size of disc drive or memory  102 . In another non-limiting embodiment of the invention, controller  106  continually monitors the RAM  104  to disk drive  10  “turn over” and may transmit a signal to the user (via the motherboard CPU and conventional display assembly) to alert the user of the computer system that additional RAM units  103  may be required to maintain the performance of the system..  
         [0027]    Power source  105  is a Direct Current source, which can be a rechargeable battery, a battery or an AC-DC converter. It provides continuous power supply to the controller  101 , disk drive  102  and the RAM unit  104 .  
         [0028]    Controller  101  is a programmable processor connected to external disk drive  102 , computer system bus  107 , and the RAM unit  104 . Controller  101  transfers data between the computer and the RAM units  104  and between the RAM  104  and the disk drive  102 . Controller  101  emulates and is fully compatible with a standard disk drive, such as an IDE disk drive, a SCSI disk drive or a Universal Serial bus (“USB”) disk drive. The computer system accesses this device exactly like accessing to a standard disk drive.  
         [0029]    Controller  101  maintains a RAM data block access table  200 , which is best shown in FIG. 5. In this RAM data block access table  200 , a sequential number is assigned to the most recently accessed data block. Once the RAM  104  is full of data blocks (i.e., the storage capacity of the RAM  104  is filled with sequentially numbered stored data blocks), controller  101  stores the most recently accessed data block in the RAM  104  and removes the less recently accessed data block from the RAM  104 . A special area of the RAM  104  is reserved for the data block that the computer system uses during system startup or booting to enhance the boot performance.  
         [0030]    If the content of the data block is changed by the computer system, a modified flag is set to the data block access table  200  by the controller  101  in the RAM  104 . The data block with a modified flag is then copied to the data block in the disk drive  102  at a predetermined period instead of each time when the content is changed. This design reduces the frequency of disk drive  102  access while synchronizing the data blocks between the RAM unit  104  and the disk drive  102  effectively. When the computer system is powered down, controller  101  copies all of the data blocks with the modified flags that are stored in RAM unit  104  to the disk drive  102  before shutting down the power of the disk drive. When the computer system is booted, controller  101  checks the integrity of the data in the RAM units  104 . If the data block stored in RAM  104  is corrupted due to power source failure or from the addition or removal of the RAM units  103  (i.e., the user of the system adds or removes RAM units  103  to the computer system), controller  101  copies the flagged data from the disk drive  102  into the newly configured (or re-powered) RAM units  104 .  
         [0031]    Controller  101  may be connected to any standard peripheral interface such IDE interface, SCSI interface, USB interface, or firewire interface.  
         [0032]    Each RAM unit  103  can be any standard random access memory such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) or rambus RAM.  
         [0033]    In one non-limiting embodiment of the invention, when the primary source of energy is a battery (not shown) and the controller (either CPU  51  or controller  101 ) determines that the battery is low on power, the modified data block stored upon RAM units  104  is saved or “backed-up” to the disk drive  102  before the disk drive  102  is powered down. The recently used and system boot data blocks are still in the RAM  104  with a separate power source  105  than the main computer system. The power source  105  only supplies enough power to maintain DRAM in power-down mode. This ensures a very minimum of consumption of energy from power source  105  in this hybrid storage device  106 . In case of power source failure, the RAM  104  is refreshed from the disk drive  102  when the main computer system is powered back on.  
         [0034]    Referring now to FIG. 5, an area is reserved in the RAM units  104  for a data block access table  200  to map the RAM address  201  into disk drive address  202 . An access sequential number  203  is assigned to the item of the data block access table  200  each time the data block is accessed. It should be appreciated that in the preferred embodiment of the invention, the most recently accessed data block has a larger number. The smaller sequential number indicates that a data block has been less recently accessed with respect to data blocks having higher sequential numbers. The less recently accessed data block is discharged from the RAM units  103  when RAM is needed for a newly accessed data block. In order to improve the booting performance, the portion of the data block with the smallest sequential number is always reserved in the RAM units. The sequential number is re-assigned when the computer system is rebooted.  
         [0035]    When the content of the data block in RAM Unit  104  is modified by the computer system, a modified flag  204  is set for that item in the list. Periodically, the controller  101  saves or backs up the changes in the RAM unit  104  to the disk drive  102 . The modified flag  204  is reset once the change is saved in the disk drive.  
         [0036]    As shown in FIG. 4, a hybrid storage device  306  of an alternate embodiment of the present invention is basically similar to that of the first preferred embodiment described above except that the disk drive  302  is not integrated into the same device (e.g., device  100 ) as hybrid storage controller  306  and in this non-limiting embodiment, the computer CPU (i.e., the motherboard Central Processing Unit) may directly control the interaction of hybrid storage controller  306  and disk drive  302 .  
         [0037]    Hybrid storage controller  106  emulates a disk drive&#39;s protocol and sector configuration and in this manner, this invention can be retrofitted into existing computer systems without installing any additional device drivers and software. It should be appreciated that the present invention can therefore be applied to existing computer systems with a minimum hardware modification and no software modification.

Technology Classification (CPC): 6