STORAGE DEVICE INTERFACE AND METHODS FOR USING SAME

• US 20150121137A1
• Filed: 01/08/2015
• Published: 04/30/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 11/18/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Nimble Storage Inc (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Inventors: McKnight, Thomas P., Zuo, Xiaoshan, Maheshwari, Umesh
• Application Number:
  US14/592,799
• Publication Number:
  US 20150121137A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/15
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/30 Means for acting in the event of power-supply failure or interruption, e.g. power-supply fluctuations for resetting only G06F1/24
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1402 Saving, restoring, recovering or retrying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1441 Resetting or repowering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1469 Backup restoration techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0246 in block erasable memory, e.g. flash memory
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/1668 Details of memory controller
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/28 using burst mode transfer, e.g. direct memory access DMA, cycle steal G06F13/32 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/385 for adaptation of a particular data processing system to different peripheral devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/7201 Logical to physical mapping or translation of blocks or pages
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A memory system controller includes one or more sockets for accommodating NVDIMM cards produced by different NVDIMM providers; a PCIe interface for coupling the memory system controller to a host; and a controller coupled to the PCIe interface over a PCIe-compliant connection and to the one or more sockets over respective DDR2 connections. The controller is configured to manage data transfers between the host and a specified one of the NVDIMM sockets in which an NVDIMM card is accommodated as DMA reads and writes, format data received from the PCIe interface for transmission to the specified NVDIMM socket over the corresponding one or more DDR2 interfaces, and initiate save and restore operations on the NVDIMM card accommodated within the specified NVDIMM socket in response to power failure and power restoration indications.

Claims

1. A storage device interface, comprising:

a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) interface configured to be coupled to a host system;

a socket configured to be coupled to a memory card, wherein the memory card comprises dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and flash memory; and

a controller communicatively coupled to the PCIe interface and the socket,

wherein upon detecting a loss of power, the controller instructs the memory card to save data stored on the DRAM of the memory card onto the flash memory of the memory card, the save operation being completed with power supplied by an ultra capacitor.

2. The storage device interface of claim 1, wherein upon detecting a restoration of power, the controller further instructs the memory card to save the data on the flash memory of the memory card onto the DRAM of the memory card.

3. The storage device interface of claim 1, wherein the memory card is a non-volatile dual in-line memory module (NVDIMM) card.

4. The storage device interface of claim 1, wherein the socket is a non-volatile dual in-line memory module (NVDIMM) socket.

5. The storage device interface of claim 1, wherein the controller formats data received from the host system into a format suitable for the memory card, and formats data received from the memory card into a format suitable for the host system.

6. The storage device interface of claim 1, wherein a first interface facilitates the communication of data between the controller and the memory card, and a second interface facilitates the communication of commands between the controller and the memory card.

7. The storage device interface of claim 6, wherein the first interface is a double data rate (DDR2) interface and the second interface is a two-wire interface (TWI).

8. The storage device interface of claim 1, wherein a first direct memory access (DMA) engine of the controller formats data received from the host system into a format suitable for the memory card, and a second direct memory access (DMA) engine of the controller formats data received from the memory card into a format suitable for the host system.

9. The storage device interface of claim 8, wherein subsequent to the data being received from the host system and prior to the data being transmitted to the memory card, the first DMA engine temporarily stores the data in a data buffer of the controller.

10. The storage device interface of claim 8, wherein subsequent to the data being received from the memory card and prior to the data being transmitted to the host system, the second DMA engine temporarily stores the data in a data buffer of the controller.

11. The storage device interface of claim 1, wherein during a direct memory access (DMA) write operation, data from the host system is transferred to the DRAM of the memory card.

12. The storage device interface of claim 11, wherein the data from the host system is accumulated in a data buffer of the controller prior to being transferred to the DRAM of the memory card.

13. The storage device interface of claim 1, wherein during a direct memory access (DMA) read operation, data from the DRAM of the memory card is transferred to the host system.

14. The storage device interface of claim 13, wherein the data from the DRAM of the memory card is accumulated in a data buffer of the controller prior to being transferred to the host system.

15. A method, comprising:

receiving data from a host system at a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) interface of a storage device interface;

formatting, by a controller of the storage device interface, the data received from the host system into a format suitable for a memory card, wherein the memory card (i) is communicatively coupled to the storage device interface via a socket, and (ii) comprises dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and flash memory;

transmitting, via the socket, the formatted data to the memory card; and

storing the transmitted data on the DRAM of the memory card,

wherein upon detecting a loss of power, the controller instructs the memory card to save the data stored on the DRAM of the memory card onto the flash memory of the memory card, the save operation being completed with power supplied by an ultra capacitor.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein upon detecting a restoration of power, the controller further instructs the memory card to save the data on the flash memory of the memory card onto the DRAM of the memory card.

17. The method of claim 15, further comprising comparing a supply power level to a threshold reference level, and if the supply power level is less than the threshold reference level, notifying the controller of a power failure.

18. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium comprising software instructions that, when executed by a controller of a storage device interface, cause the controller to:

receive data from a host system at a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) interface of the storage device interface;

format the data received from the host system into a format suitable for a memory card, wherein the memory card (i) is communicatively coupled to the storage device interface via a socket, and (ii) comprises dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and flash memory; and

transmit, via the socket, the formatted data to the memory card,

wherein the transmitted data is stored on the DRAM of the memory card, and

wherein upon detecting a loss of power, the controller instructs the memory card to save the data stored on the DRAM of the memory card onto the flash memory of the memory card, the save operation being completed with power supplied by an ultra capacitor.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein upon detecting a restoration of power, the controller further instructs the memory card to save the data on the flash memory of the memory card onto the DRAM of the memory card.