Patent ID: 8630121

Claim:
A system comprising: a reference voltage module configured to generate one or more reference voltages, wherein the one or more reference voltages are usable to determine states of a plurality of memory cells of a nonvolatile memory, and wherein the plurality of memory cells of the nonvolatile memory have a threshold voltage distribution; a divider module configured to select, in response to a change in the threshold voltage distribution of the plurality of memory cells, a voltage range within which to update one of the reference voltages, and divide the voltage range into a plurality of regions; a counting module configured to count a number of the memory cells having threshold voltages within each of the plurality of regions; and an update module configured to select one of the plurality of regions having the threshold voltages of a smallest number of the memory cells, and update the one of the reference voltages to a voltage value associated with the selected one of the plurality of regions in order to compensate for the change in the threshold voltage distribution of the plurality of memory cells.