Patent ID: 7302546

Claim:
A method, comprising: allocating a plurality of logical memory blocks corresponding to a memory in a computational device; associating an attribute with at least one logical memory block, wherein the attribute indicates whether the at least one logical memory block can be swapped from the memory, and wherein physical blocks corresponding to the at least one logical memory block are contiguous, wherein allocating the plurality of logical memory blocks and associating the attribute are performed during a reinitialized program load by a firmware in the computational device, wherein the computational device includes an operating system that has a limit on an amount of memory that can be reserved for swapping from the memory, wherein allocating the plurality of logical memory blocks and associating the attribute allow an application to exceed the limit on the amount of memory that can be reserved, and wherein allocating the plurality of logical memory blocks and associating the attribute further comprise: (i) determining if the firmware in the computational device possesses information on which of the plurality of logical memory blocks to configure into reserved logical memory blocks, wherein the information has been saved by the firmware from an initialized program load that has been performed prior to the reinitialized program load; and (ii) setting the attribute associated with the at least one logical memory block based on the possessed information, in response to determining that the firmware in the computational device possesses information on which of the plurality of logical memory blocks to configure into the reserved logical memory blocks, wherein the attribute if set indicates that the at least one logical memory block cannot be swapped from the memory and that the at least one logical memory block is a reserved logical memory block; and associating an additional attribute with the at least one logical memory block, wherein the additional attribute further characterizes properties of the at least one logical memory block, and wherein the additional attribute indicates whether or not customer modified data is present in the at least one logical block.