Patent ID: 8856423

Claim:
A solid-state disk comprising: nonvolatile semiconductor memory arranged in the solid-state disk; a control module arranged in the solid-state disk, wherein the control module includes a first interface configured to interface the nonvolatile semiconductor memory of the solid-state disk to a host adapter of a handheld device, wherein the first interface is an input/output interface of a hard disk drive; a cache memory arranged in the control module, the cache memory configured to selectively cache at least one of code and data from the nonvolatile semiconductor memory; and a second interface configured to (i) interface the cache memory directly to a processor of the handheld device, and (ii) output portions of the at least one of code and data from the cache memory to the processor, wherein the second interface is different than the first interface, wherein the processor of the handheld device is located external to the solid-state disk, and wherein the first interface is configured to interface the nonvolatile semiconductor memory of the solid-state disk with the processor via (i) the host adapter and (ii) a system bus of the handheld device; and volatile memory arranged in the solid-state disk, wherein the volatile memory is arranged external to the control module, and wherein the volatile memory is separate from the cache memory, wherein the control module is configured to read the at least one of code and data from the nonvolatile semiconductor memory of the solid-state disk into the volatile memory of the solid-state disk, and wherein the cache memory is configured to cache the at least one of code and data from the volatile memory.