DATA VERSIONING IN SOLID STATE MEMORY

• US 20130332684A1
• Filed: 06/12/2012
• Published: 12/12/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: KANDIRAJU, Gokul B., FRANKE, Hubertus, CRAFT, David
• Granted Patent: US 9,122,581 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/161
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0246 in block erasable memory, e.g. flash memory
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/7201 Logical to physical mapping or translation of blocks or pages
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/7207 management of metadata or control data

Abstract

Embodiments are directed to maintaining versions of data within a solid state memory. One or more embodiments create at least one data structure associated with at least one logical page of a solid state memory. The logical page is associated with at least one physical page in a data block of the solid state memory. A first set of information associated with the logical page is stored in the data structure. A second set of information associated with the physical page is stored in the data structure. The second set of information includes at least versioning information identifying which version of the logical page is represented by a dataset is stored within the physical page.

Claims

1. A method for maintaining versions of data within a solid state memory, the method comprising:

creating at least one data structure associated with at least one logical page of a solid state memory, wherein the logical page is associated with at least one physical page in a data block of the solid state memory;

storing a first set of information associated with the logical page in the data structure; and

storing a second set of information associated with the physical page in the data structure, wherein the second set of information comprises at least versioning information identifying which version of the logical page is represented by a dataset stored within the physical page.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, from a file system, the versioning information in a write request comprising the dataset.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

linking the first set of information to the second set of information.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the linking comprises:

storing a pointer in the first set of information, wherein the pointer identifies a location of the second set of information.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein storing of the first set of information comprises:

storing an identifier associated with the logical page, wherein the identifier indicates one of a file and a directory of a file system that is associated with the logical page.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein storing the first set of information comprises:

storing a pointer associated with the logical page, wherein the pointer identifies a location of an entry associated with the logical page in a logical-to-physical translation table for the solid state memory.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein storing the second set of information comprises:

storing a set of data versioning tag information associated with the physical page, wherein the set of data versioning tag information comprises at least the versioning information and an identifier associated with one of a file and a directory of a file system associated with the dataset stored in the physical page.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the set of data versioning tag information further comprises a group identifier associated with the logical page of the physical page, wherein the group identifier is assigned to the logical page by a file system and associates the logical page with one of inodes, indirect blocks, data blocks, and special blocks of the file system.