Patent ID: 8427854

Claim:
In a computing environment a method of searching for patterns stored on a hardware storage device, the method comprising: as part of a memory refresh operation, performing a read to read contents of a portion of a memory; writing the read contents of the portion of memory back to the portion of memory; providing the read contents to data comparison logic as part of the memory refresh operation by reading into a buffer in addition to writing back to the portion of memory; using the data comparison logic; comparing the read contents to one or more predetermined data patterns by comparing the contents of the buffer with one or more predetermined data patterns; determining whether or not the read contents match at least one of the one or more predetermined data patterns; when the read contents match at least one of the one or more predetermined data patterns providing a software readable indicator indicating that the read contents match at least one of the one or more predetermined data patterns; and when the read contents match at least one of the one or more predetermined data patterns, determining a probability of a larger pattern including the read contents as a portion of the larger pattern being in the memory.