Self monitoring and self repairing ECC

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8996953-B2
Application number	US-201313781807-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 1, 2013
Priority date	Mar 1, 2013
Publication date	Mar 31, 2015
Grant date	Mar 31, 2015

Abstract

Exemplary embodiments of the present invention disclose a method and system for monitoring a first Error Correcting Code (ECC) device for failure and replacing the first ECC device with a second ECC device if the first ECC device begins to fail or fails. In a step, an exemplary embodiment detects that a specified number of correctable errors is exceeded. In another step, an exemplary embodiment detects the occurrence of an uncorrectable error. In another step, an exemplary embodiment performs a loopback test on an ECC device if a specified number of correctable errors is exceeded or if an uncorrectable error occurs. In another step, an exemplary embodiment replaces an ECC device that fails the loopback test with an ECC device that passes a loopback test.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system for monitoring a first Error Correcting Code (ECC) module for failure and replacing a first ECC module with a second ECC module if the first ECC module fails, the system comprising:
an ECC system comprised of the first ECC module and the second ECC module that independently perform ECC;
logic to count correctable errors detected by the first ECC module and by the second ECC module in data that is read from a memory;
logic to detect an uncorrecta…

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Cordero Edgar R
• Dell Timothy J
• Henderson Joab D
• Sabrowski Jeffrey A
• Saetow Anuwat
• Sethuraman Saravanan

Classifications

• G06F11/28 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F11/2017

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F11/1048

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F11/2215 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• H03M13/29

  Electricity · mapped topic