System Employing MRAM and Physically Addressed Solid State Disk
A computer system includes a Central Processing Unit (CPU) that has a physically-addressed solid state disk (SSD), addressable using physical addresses associated with user data and provided by a host. The user data is to be stored in or retrieved from the physically-addressed SSD in blocks. Further, a non-volatile memory module is coupled to the CPU and includes flash tables used to manage blocks in the physically addressed SSD. The flash tables have tables that are used to map logical to physical blocks for identifying the location of stored data in the physically addressed SSD. The flash tables are maintained in the non-volatile memory modules thereby avoiding reconstruction of the flash tables upon power interruption.
1 . A computer system comprising:
a Central Processing Unit (CPU):
a physically-addressed solid state disk (SSD) that is addressable using physical addresses associated with user data, provided by a host, to be stored in or retrieved from the physically-addressed SSD in blocks;
a non-volatile memory module coupled to the CPU, the non-volatile memory module including flash tables used to manage blocks in the physically addressed SSD, the flash tables including tables used to map logical to physical blocks for identifying the location of stored data in the physically addressed SSD,
wherein the flash tables are maintained in the non-volatile memory modules thereby avoiding reconstruction of the flash tables upon power interruption.
2 . The computer system, as recited in claim 1 , wherein the physically-addressed solid state disk (SSD) includes a flash subsystem.
3 . The computer system, as recited in claim 2 , wherein the flash subsystem is made of flash NAND memory.
4 . The computer system, as recited in claim 6 , wherein the flash subsystem is made of flash NOR memory.
5 . The computer system, as recited in claim 1 , wherein the non-volatile memory module includes MRAM.
6 . The computer system, as recited in claim 1 , wherein the non-volatile memory module includes STTMRAM.
7 . The computer system, as recited in claim 1 , wherein the non-volatile memory module is coupled to the CPU through a NV memory channel.
8 . The computer system, as recited in claim 7 , wherein the NV memory channel is a DRAM memory channel.
9 . The computer system, as recited in claim 1 , wherein the NV memory module is coupled to the CPU via a system bus.
10 . The computer system, as recited in claim 9 , wherein the system bus is a Serial Peripheral Interface bus.
11 . The computer system, as recited in claim 1 , further including a system memory coupled to the CPU and configured to store software driver for managing the flash tables.
12 . A computer system comprising:
a Central Processing Unit (CPU):
a physically-addressed solid state disk (SSD) that is addressable using physical addresses associated with user data, provided by a host, to be stored in or retrieved from the physically-addressed SSD in blocks;
a system memory coupled to the CPU, the system memory including flash tables used to manage blocks in the physically addressed SSD, the flash tables including tables used to map logical to physical blocks for identifying the location of stored data in the physically addressed SSD,
the physically-addressable SSD includes a flash subsystem that includes flash memory configured to save snapshots of the flash tables including a previous version of the flash tables and a current version of the flash tables under the direction of the CPU, the non-volatile memory module including a magnetic random access memory (MRAM) configured to store changes to the flash tables,
wherein the current version of the snapshot of the flash tables is used to reconstruct the flash tables upon power interruption.
13 . The computer system, as recited in claim 12 , wherein the flash subsystem is made of flash NAND memory.
14 . The computer system, as recited in claim 13 , wherein the flash subsystem is made of flash NOR memory.
15 . The computer system, as recited in claim 12 , wherein the non-volatile memory module includes MRAM.
16 . The computer system, as recited in claim 12 , wherein the non-volatile memory module includes STTMRAM.
17 . The computer system, as recited in claim 12 , wherein the non-volatile memory module is coupled to the CPU through a memory channel.
18 . The computer system, as recited in claim 17 , wherein the NV memory channel is a DRAM memory channel.
19 . The computer system, as recited in claim 12 , wherein the NV memory module is coupled to the CPU via a system bus.
20 . The computer system, as recited in claim 12 , wherein system memory is configured to store a software driver for managing the flash tables.