Storage device and debugging method thereof

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9672091-B2
Application number	US-201514937370-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 10, 2015
Priority date	Nov 10, 2015
Publication date	Jun 6, 2017
Grant date	Jun 6, 2017

Abstract

Disclosed is a storage device which generates dump data at occurrence of an error. The storage device includes a buffer memory comprising a dump area for storing the dump data, a wireless module configured to transmit the dump data to a wireless channel, and a storage controller configured to monitor a generation of the dump data, to turn on the wireless module at the generation of the dump data, and to transmit the dump data to the wireless module.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A storage device which generates dump data upon an occurrence of an error, the storage device comprising:
a buffer memory comprising a dump area for storing the dump data;
a wireless module that transmits the dump data, which is received from the dump area, to a wireless channel; and
a storage controller that, in response to detecting the dump data within the dump area, turns on the wireless module and transmits the dump data from the dump area to the wireless module.

2. The storage device of claim 1 , wherein the storage controller turns on the wireless module without external intervention.

3. The storage device of claim 2 , wherein the storage controller turns off the wireless module in response to detecting that transmission of the dump data from the wireless module to the wireless channel is completed.

4. The storage device of claim 1 , wherein the storage controller transmits the dump data to the outside based on an external command provided through the wireless module, with the wireless module turned on.

5. The storage device of claim 4 , wherein the storage controller turns off the wireless module when the external command is not received through the wireless module during a reference time from a turn-on point in time of the wireless module.

6. The storage device of claim 1 , wherein the storage controller comprises at least one of an I2C interface, a system management bus (SMBus) interface, a universal asynchronous receiver transmitter (UART) interface, a serial peripheral interface (SPI), and a high-speed inter-chip (HSIC) interface.

7. The storage device of claim 1 , wherein the storage controller performs a turn-on or turn-off operation of the wireless module in response to a vendor unique command provided from a host.

8. The storage device of claim 7 , wherein the storage controller is provided with the vendor unique command for turning off the wireless module when the dump data is successfully transmitted to a debugging host.

9. The storage device of claim 1 , wherein the storage controller allows access to a user area of the buffer memory through the wireless module using an authentication procedure.

10. The storage device of claim 1 , further comprising:
a nonvolatile memory device configured to store data stored in the buffer memory, wherein
the nonvolatile memory device includes a three-dimensional memory array.

11. A debugging method of a storage device electrically connected with a host, the debugging method comprising:
determining whether dump data exists in a dump area of a buffer memory;
turning on a wireless module in response to determining that the dump data exists in the dump area;
transmitting the dump data from the dump area to a debugging device through the wireless module and a wireless channel in response to turning on the wireless module; and
turning off the wireless module upon completing the transmission of the dump data to the debugging device.

12. The debugging method of claim 11 , wherein the storage device transmits the dump data to the debugging device based on a command provided from the debugging device.

13. The debugging method of claim 11 , wherein the turning off of the wireless module is performed in response to a message received from the debugging device.

14. The debugging method of claim 11 , further comprising transmitting data of a user area of the buffer memory to the debugging device through an authentication procedure with the wireless module turned on.

15. The debugging method of claim 11 , wherein the storage device comprises a solid state drive connected with the host based on a universal serial bus (USB) protocol, a small computer system interface (SCSI) protocol, a PCI express protocol, an ATA protocol, a parallel ATA (PTA) protocol, a serial ATA (SATA) protocol, or a serial attached SCSI (SAS) protocol.

Assignees

• Samsung Electronics Co Ltd

Inventors

• Singaravelu Vanaja Deepa
• Kim Young-Deok
• Yang Chulwon
• Dhanasekaran Ramkumar
• Ihm Donghyuk

Classifications

• G06F11/0727

  in a storage system, e.g. in a DASD or network based storage system (drivers for digital recording or reproducing units G06F3/06; circuits for error detection or correction within digital recording or reproducing units G11B20/18; for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS], H04L67/1097) · CPC title

• G06F11/0778 Primary

  Dumping, i.e. gathering error/state information after a fault for later diagnosis · CPC title

• G06F11/0751

  Error or fault detection not based on redundancy (power supply failures G06F1/30; network fault management H04L41/06) · CPC title

• H04W4/008

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04W4/80

  Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication · CPC title