Patent ID: 7707369

Claim:
A method comprising: generating a unique identification of a memory device, wherein the identification is unique among memory devices produced by a plurality of manufacturers of memory devices of the same type at the time of generation of the unique identification, wherein the memory device has a duplicate serial number shared by at least one other memory device of the same type either within an inventory among any of said plurality of manufacturers of memory devices of the same type or within an inventory of a manufacturer of the memory device itself, and wherein the memory device stores a plurality of data fields in a serial presence detect (SPD) table, wherein at least two of said data fields include configuration information regarding the memory device, the generating including: selectively querying said at least two of said data fields stored in the SPD table to extract contents of the at least two of said data fields, wherein the at least two of said data fields are stored in a first predetermined data type format; and re-ordering the extracted contents of the at least two selectively queried data fields of the plurality of data fields to place the contents into a second format without using a hardware or software key provided by the manufacturer of the memory device; and storing the generated unique identification; and tracking the memory device back to its source of manufacture based on the unique identification and not based on the duplicate serial number.