SEMICONDUCTOR MEMORY DEVICE AND SYSTEM OPERATING METHOD

• US 20140173231A1
• Filed: 08/15/2013
• Published: 06/19/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2012
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: SK Hynix Inc.
• Original Assignee: SK Hynix Inc.
• Inventors: UM, Gi-Pyo, LEE, Myung-Suk, KWAK, Jeong-Soon, KIM, Eui-Jin
• Application Number:
  US13/968,116
• Publication Number:
  US 20140173231A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/162
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0611 in relation to response time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0616 in relation to life time, e.g. increasing Mean Time Between Failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/064 Management of blocks
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0659 Command handling arrangements, e.g. command buffers, queues, command scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0688 Non-volatile semiconductor memory arrays

Abstract

Disclosed is a semiconductor memory device for controlling a memory block. The semiconductor memory device includes a plurality of memory blocks to store data, and controller. The memory controller requests a first memory block, of the plurality of memory blocks, to performing a copy operation to copy the first memory block to a second memory block of the plurality of memory blocks. The controller then requests the first memory block to perform an operation different than the copy operation. The controller then requests the memory block to stop the copy operation based on the to perform an operation different than the copy operation. Finally, the controller requests the memory block to resume the copy operation after the operation different than the copy operation is completed.

Claims

1. A method of operating a semiconductor memory having a plurality of memory blocks, comprising:

performing a block copy operation in response to a request of a block copy operation; and

stopping the block copy operation in response to a request of a specific operation while the block copy operation is performed.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing a memory information related to a progression state of the block copy operation; and

performing specific operation according to a specific operation signal.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of memory blocks includes a plurality of pages.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the memory information includes a page address of a page that the block copy operation is completed.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the memory information includes a page address of a page that the block copy operation is temporarily stopped.

6. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

resuming the block copy operation referring to the memory information after the performing specific operation.

7. The method of claim 2, wherein the specific operation signal is for requesting specific operation except for the block copy operation.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the specific operation includes a merge operation, a read operation and a write operation.

9. A method of operating a semiconductor memory having a plurality of memory blocks comprising:

performing a block copy operation which copies a data stored in a first memory block to a second memory block;

stopping the block copy operation if a specific operation is requested while the block copy operation is performed; and

performing the specific operation.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

resuming the block copy operation after the performing specific operation if the specific operation is performed in a third memory block.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

storing a memory information related to a progression state of the block copy operation.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein each of the plurality of memory blocks includes a plurality of pages.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the memory information includes a page address of a page that the block copy operation is completed.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the memory information includes a page address of the memory block which is the block copy operation is temporarily stopped.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein the memory information includes a page address of a page that the block copy operation is temporarily stopped.

16. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

not resuming the block copy operation after the performing specific operation if the specific operation is performed in the first memory block or the second memory block.

17. A semiconductor system, comprising:

a host controller configured to transmit a block copy operation signal and a specific operation signal to a semiconductor memory device; and

the semiconductor memory device configured to performs a block copy operation in response to the block copy operation signal and a specific operation in response to the specific operation signal from the host controller,

wherein the semiconductor memory device, comprises;

a plurality of memory blocks configured to store data according to the block copy operation and the specific operation; and

a memory controller configured to;

perform the block copy operation in response to the block copy operation signal from the host controller; and

stop the block copy operation in response to the specific operation signal from the host controller while the block copy operation is performed.

18. The semiconductor system of claim 17, wherein the memory controller includes a buffer memory storing memory information related to a progression state of the block copy operation.

19. The semiconductor system of claim 18, wherein the memory controller stores memory information related to a progression state of the block copy operation to the buffer memory;

performs the specific operation according to a specific operation signal; and

resumes the block copy operation referring to the memory information after the specific operation is performed.

20. The semiconductor system of claim 17, wherein the memory controller does not resume the block copy operation after the specific operation is performed if the specific operation is performed in the same memory block as the block copy operation.