Apparatus and method for correcting errors in data accessed from a memory device

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8935592-B2
Application number	US-201213681789-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 20, 2012
Priority date	Nov 20, 2012
Publication date	Jan 13, 2015
Grant date	Jan 13, 2015

Abstract

An apparatus and method for correcting errors in data accessed from a memory device. A plurality of read symbols are read from a memory device. Syndrome information is then determined from the n data symbols and associated m error correction code symbols. Error correction circuitry uses the syndrome information in order to attempt to locate each read symbol containing an error and to correct the errors in each of those located read symbols. Error tracking circuitry tracks which memory regions the located read symbols containing an error originate from, and, on detecting an error threshold condition, sets at least one memory region as an erasure memory region. The correction circuitry treats each read symbol as a located read symbol containing an error, such that the read symbols to be located are not all randomly distributed and more than PMAX read symbols containing errors can be corrected.

First claim

We claim:

1. An apparatus comprising:
a memory device comprising multiple memory regions, and configured to store data symbols and associated error correction code (ECC) symbols;
read circuitry configured to perform a read operation in order to output a plurality of read symbols from said memory device, said read symbols comprising n data symbols and an associated m error correction code symbols, and comprising more than one read symbol from each memory region, both n and m bein…

Assignees

• Advanced Risc Mach Ltd

Inventors

• Campbell Michael Andrew
• Hay Timothy Nicholas

Classifications

• G06F11/10 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F11/1048 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G11C29/42 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic