Patent ID: 7170788

Claim:
A non-volatile storage system, comprising: first and second subsets of non-volatile storage elements in a set of non-volatile storage elements; a plurality of word lines that extend in a sequence from a first word line to a last word line, the plurality of word lines including first and second subsets of word lines; and one or more managing circuits in communication with the first and second subsets of non-volatile storage elements via the first and second subsets of word lines, respectively, the one or more managing circuits receive a request to program data, and, responsive to the request, program the first subset of non-volatile storage elements using the first subset of word lines, and subsequently, program the second subset of non-volatile storage elements using the second subset of word lines, the first and second subsets of non-volatile storage elements are programmed in a predefined word line sequence that is out of sequence relative to the sequence in which the plurality of word lines extend.