US 20050073899 A1
A data storage device comprises a non-volatile, re-writable solid state memory 10 having relatively high and low speed ports 12, 14 allowing data to be written into the memory via the high speed port at a substantially faster speed that it is read out from the low speed port, and a memory control 16 for controlling the writing and reading of data to and from the memory.
1. A data storage device comprising a non-volatile, re-writable solid state memory having at least two data ports allowing data to be written into the memory via at least one port at a substantially faster speed than it is read out of the memory via at least one other port, and a memory control for controlling the writing and reading of data to and from the memory.
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This invention relates to a data storage device using non-volatile, re-writable solid state (“flash”) memory.
According to the present invention there is provided a data storage device comprising a non-volatile, re-writable solid state memory having at least two data ports allowing data to be written into the memory via at least one port at a substantially faster speed than it is read out of the memory via at least one other port, and a memory control for controlling the writing and reading of data to and from the memory.
Preferably the said at least one port provides a sustained transfer rate of at least 60 MBytes/sec and most preferably at least 80 MBytes/sec. Preferably, too, the at least one other port provides a transfer rate at least within the range 1.5 to 5 MBytes/sec. The memory preferably has a capacity of at least 512 Mbyte and most preferably at least 2 Gbytes.
An embodiment of the invention provides a flash storage device functioning as a dual-ported, portable, high capacity data storage device. The dual-ported (two interface) nature of the device allows data to be written into the memory at high speed and read out from the memory at a different, lower speed.
The high speed interface is compliant with the Serial ATA Specification (Serial ATA: High Speed Serialized Attachment, Rev 1.0a, Jan. 7, 2003) and can interface to a S-ATA host. The high speed interface provides a minimum sustained transfer rate of 80 MBytes/sec. The flash storage device can accept 2 GBytes in at least 30 seconds on the high speed interface. The slow speed interface on the flash storage device is compliant with the Secure Digital (SD) Specification (SD Physical Layer Specification, Version 1.01, Apr. 15, 2001) and can interface to an SD host. The slow speed interface provides a minimum transfer rate of 2.5 MBytes/sec. The flash storage device is hot-swappable allowing insertion and removal from live systems without disrupting the operation of those systems (this is inherent in the S-ATA and SD standards).
In use the high speed S-ATA interface on the flash storage device can interface to a large capacity, standalone kiosk style device which is capable of delivering data at speeds of the order 80 MBytes/sec. The kiosk device will be populated with appropriate high value content such as movies. High resolution movie content will require large file sizes. Lower resolution movie content will require smaller file sizes. In both cases (a single large transfer or multiple smaller transfers) the ability to rapidly download the content into the flash storage device via the high speed S-ATA interface allows for kiosk based high value content distribution. The slow speed SD interface on the flash storage device can interface to a playback device that can interpret and display the stored data.
An embodiment of the invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
The flash storage device shown in
The Serial ATA Specification envisages two principle communicating elements: (1) a host which initiates transactions, and (2) a device which responds to host initiated transactions. The flash storage device of
The main objectives of the flash storage device are:
The control information from the S-ATA parallel interface 20 is used to determine what type of transaction has been initiated by the host. Depending on the type of transaction, an IDE state machine 22 can resolve all appropriate responses to the transaction itself. The range of possible commands and operations required to be supported by the IDE state machine are dictated by the ATA/ATAPI Specification (ATA/ATAPI-5: AT Attachment with Packet Interface-5, Rev 3, Feb. 29, 2000).
The IDE state machine 22 will respond to and terminate all S-ATA host-initiated commands other than data read and data write transactions. In the case of data read and write transactions, the IDE state machine works with a striping controller 24 (to be described) to facilitate data transfer across the parallel data interface 20 to the flash array 10 via a data buffer 26. In the case of errors over the S-ATA interface 12, the IDE state machine receives a notification of the error condition from the S-ATA interface and will initiate the correct response to terminate the transaction. In the case of data write errors in the flash array 10, notification of the error is received from the striping controller 24 and the IDE state machine 22 will initiate the correct response over the S-ATA interface 12. In the case of data read errors in the flash array 10, notification of the error is received from the striping controller 24 and the IDE state machine 22 will initiate the correct response over the S-ATA interface.
Data buffering 26 is implemented between the S-ATA interface 12 and the striping controller 24. This buffering has three purposes:
The amount of data buffering required can be variable and depends on the following factors:
These parameters are used to determine the size of the data buffer 26. In this embodiment a buffer size of 1 Mbytes of SRAM is used.
In addition to the data buffer 26 and in conjunction with the IDE state machine 22, flow control is implemented between the flash array 10 and the S-ATA host. This flow control throttles the data rate across the S-ATA interface 12 to a level that can be supported by the write rate of the flash array. During a data write operation initiated by a S-ATA host, write data is transferred via the data bus to the buffer 26 under the control of the IDE state machine 22. The striping controller 24 then manages the transfer of the data from the buffer 26 into the flash array 10. During a data read operation initiated by the S-ATA host, the striping controller 24 manages the fetching of data from the flash array 10 and places it in the buffer 26. The IDE state machine 22 then manages the transfer of the data out of the buffer 26 and into the S-ATA interface 12 via the data bus.
The flash control circuitry 16 and the flash array 10 has one primary purpose: the storage and retrieval of data at a data rate as close to the S-ATA rate as is allowed by the characteristics of the flash media itself. There are several components which achieve this, as follows:
The striping controller 24 facilitates the transfer of data either from the flash array 10 to the buffer 26 on a read operation or from the buffer 26 to the flash array 10 on a write operation. The striping controller has knowledge of the topology of the flash array and knowledge of the type of NAND flash device being used (by design). The striping controller also receives information on the position of unreliable portions of the flash array from the BBLUT. The striping controller takes this topology and bad block information together with the addressing information provided by an address translation algorithm 28 and uses it to store and retrieve data from the flash array 10.
The striping controller resolves the various pieces of control information it receives (bad block information, block address translation) to:
The flash array 10 consists of an arrangement of non-volatile solid state re-writable memory devices. There are two types of flash memory devices within the flash array 10. The great majority of the memory is of a type called NAND flash and is used as the main data store. A small percentage 30 of the flash memory is of a type sold under the name UltraNAND flash which is 100% known good memory and, as will be described, is used to store critical control information (alternative types of known good memory that can be used are NOR flash and SuperAND flash). The flash striping controller 24 contains selection logic to determine whether reads from the flash array 10 are for the main NAND flash or the UltraAND flash 30 to provide the required read data.
The S-ATA interface 12 is capable of delivering data at rate close to the theoretical maximum support by the Serial ATA specification of 150 Mbytes/sec. The current generation of flash memory devices have a maximum write speed of between 5 Mbytes and 10 Mbytes per second to a single device. NAND flash technology uses a technique called register mode access to facilitate speeding up read and write access to flash memory.
In order to maximize the data throughput, a certain topology of flash memory devices has been chosen for the present embodiment. This topology is based on:
Striping is a mechanism of achieving parallelism in the arrangement of multiple flash devices that allows that arrangement to support data transfer rates greater than that of a single flash device. There are two types of striping, disk striping and data striping.
Disk striping is a technique for spreading data over multiple storage devices to meet performance goals. The data is broken into units and spread across the available storage units. This technique is normally used within RAID systems but can be used for any storage device. In this embodiment flash memory devices are used instead of hard disk drives. Data striping is the segmentation of logically sequential data, such as a single file, so that segments can be written to multiple physical storage devices in a round-robin fashion. This technique is useful if the processor is capable of reading or writing data faster than a single disk can supply or accept it. While data is being transferred from the first disk, the second disk can locate the next segment.
The following architecture used in the present embodiment combines a mixture of disk striping and data striping techniques.
In the flash array 10, and as shown in
The striping controller 24 takes advantage of the setup and execution nature of the page program operation. It sets up the page program operation for the first bank of 4 flash devices, then while these 4 devices are going through their execution phase, it moves on to the next 4 devices and sets them up for page program operations, and so on. When the last bank of 4 has been setup for page program, the striping controller moves back to the first bank of 4 again. So the striping controller writes to the 8 banks in a round-robin fashion similar to the data-striping technique.
Flash devices have a critical performance parameter which determines the time from which a device has accepted data to the point at which it can next accept data. This is known as the programming time. This parameter varies as a result of the silicon manufacturing process. The arrangement of flash devices implies that the write performance can be affected by the maximum programming time of the slowest device in the array. For example the range of programming times possible with Samsung 1 Gbit NAND flash devices (Part No. K9F1G08U0M ranges from a typical of 300 uS to 700 uS maximum. A solution to this problem can be fashioned by a combination of varying the array topology and using the cache programming features inherent in the flash device.
The solution to this problem in the present embodiment is to use 32×1 Gbit Samsung devices instead of 16 (i.e. a total storage of 4 Gbytes), but only use half the storage space in each 1 GBit flash device. The throughput rate of 80 MBytes/sec can definitely be achieved this way even using the max page program time of 700 us.
Given the “mostly good memory” nature of NAND flash, there has to be an area within the flash array 10 where there is 100% good memory. This is required for critical control information that needs to be immediately available upon power up. As mentioned earlier a minor percentage of UltraNAND flash 30 is used to implement known good flash memory.
Critical information for the flash array 10 is:
A 1 Mbyte area of the memory map is allocated to the UltraNAND flash 30 and a separate UltraNAND control interface 24′ is built into the striping controller 24.
A logical interface is required for the striping controller 24 to control the reading of data out of the flash array and to present it in the format required by the SD interface 14. The striping controller (in conjunction with the BBLUT and address translation algorithm 28) resolves the physical address for the required logical block read address sent by the SD host. It then reads the data out of the appropriate flash device, and sends the read data to the SD interface 14. The SD interface then transmits the read data back to the SD host over the 4-bit data bus according to the SD specification.
The SD-flash Bridge 18 acts as the link between the SD interface 14 and the striping controller 24 to ensure the address, data and control information is presented in the correct format to:
The transfer rate required for reads on the SD port (2.5 MBytes/sec) is much lower than is required for writes from the S-ATA port (80 MBytes/sec). Therefore, the flash devices do not have to be accessed four at a time as previously described. Instead, the flash devices in each bank can be read one at a time.
If the 512-byte sectors from the S-ATA host were written contiguously into flash memory (i.e. four 512-byte sectors stored in each 2048-byte page), then the reading of the data is easier than if each sector from the S-ATA host were striped across multiple flash devices. Data must be read out one page (2,048 bytes) at a time from NAND flash devices. Page read operations to NAND flash devices consist of a setup phase and an execution phase, similar to page program operations:
NAND flash operates on a principle of mostly good memory (MGM). Some blocks within the memory core are bad on delivery from the manufacturer and some go bad over the lifetime of the device. In order to avoid erroneous data writes and reads a form of bad block management is implemented.
The SD host accesses data from the flash array 10 by using logical block addresses (LBA). The sector size is 512 bytes. The SD host does not know how the data is physically stored in the flash array. Therefore, an interface is implemented to map the logical addresses to physical addresses. The S-ATA host also accesses data using LBAs. Sector size is 512 bytes. The S-ATA transport core presents this information on address port of the S-ATA interface.
The present embodiment addresses the requirements for logical-physical mapping on the SD port, and bad block management, in the following way.
The Secure Digital (SD) Memory Card specification envisages two communicating elements: (1) a host which initiates transactions, and (2) a device which responds to host initiated transactions. The slow speed interface on the flash storage device operates as an SD Memory Card device and needs to be able to communicate with standard SD hosts. SD Memory Card communication is based on a 9-pin interface (Clock, Command, 4 Data lines and 3 Power/Ground lines) and is designed to operate at operating frequency of between 0 and 25 MHz and at a low voltage range. The data and command lines are bi-directional.
The SD interface 14 presents control, address and data ports. The logical address of the data being read or written is presented on the address port. The nature of the transaction (read or write) is presented on the control port. The SD-flash bridge 18 working with the striping controller and the logical to physical address mapping interprets the address presented on the address port to resolve a physical address within the flash bank from which data is read for a read transaction and to which data is written for a write transaction. All data transfer transactions are initiated by the SD host.
In the implementation of the flash memory device, the flash array 10 consists of commercial off the shelf Samsung devices as identified above. The memory control circuitry 16 and SD-flash bridge 18 is implemented by a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) as indicated by the correspondingly labelled box enclosing these components in
If desired, the flash storage device can be provided with the capability of implementing the required hardware and software components for a particular security and access control model. The hardware & software components will be chosen to ensure the correct interpretation and implementation of a Rights Expression Language (REL).
Although the foregoing has described a device having a single high speed port and a single low speed port, other arrangements are possible. One could use a different number and type of high speed port; for example, two Gigabit Ethernet ports will perform as fast as a S-ATA port. So a tri-port device using three ports (2 Gigabit Ethernet ports for writing/control and one SD for reading) provides the same usability and performance as the embodiment described above. Similarly, one could use a different number and type of slow speed port. For example, two USB interfaces could be used, again giving a tri-port device with the same usability and performance as the described device. In each case the memory control would be adapted to manage the two high speed or low speed ports.
The invention is not limited to the embodiment described herein which may be modified or varied without departing from the scope of the invention.