Apparatus, system, and method for power reduction management in a storage device

• US 9,305,610 B2
• Filed: 10/15/2012
• Issued: 04/05/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SanDisk Technologies LLC (Western Digital Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Sandisk Technologies Incorporated (Western Digital Corporation)
• Inventors: Smith, Lance L., Fillingim, Jeremy, Flynn, David, Inskeep, Bill, Strasser, John, Thatcher, Jonathan
• Primary Examiner(s): Le, Vu
• Application Number:
  US13/652,427
• Publication Number:
  US 20130039141A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,268 Days
• Field of Search: 365/228, 365/229, 714/14
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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 11/1048 using arrangements adapted for a specific error detection or correction feature
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1076 Parity data used in redundant arrays of independent storages, e.g. in RAID systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1441 Resetting or repowering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1471 involving logging of persistent data for recovery
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2015 Redundant power supplies power supply failure G06F1/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3034 where the computing system component is a storage system, e.g. DASD based or network based digital input from or digital output to record carriers G06F3/06; digital recording or reproducing 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 Class Codes: G06F 11/3058 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring environmental properties or parameters of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring of power, currents, temperature, humidity, position, vibrations thermal management in cooling arrangements of a computing system G06F1/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/81 Threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G11C 16/10 Programming or data input circuits
• CPC Class Codes: G11C 16/30 Power supply circuits
• CPC Class Codes: G11C 5/141 Battery and back-up supplies

Abstract

An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for power reduction management. The method includes determining that a power source has failed to supply electric power above a predefined threshold. The method includes terminating one or more non-essential in-process operations on a nonvolatile memory device during a power hold-up time. The method includes executing one or more essential in-process operations on the nonvolatile memory device within the power hold-up time.

Claims

1. A method for power reduction management, the method comprising:

determining that a power source has failed to supply electric power above a predefined threshold;

terminating one or more non-essential in-process operations on a nonvolatile memory device during a power hold-up time; and

executing one or more essential in-process operations on the nonvolatile memory device within the power hold-up time.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising accepting electric power for the nonvolatile memory device from a secondary power source for at least the power hold-up time.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising prioritizing in-process operations for the nonvolatile memory device, wherein the one or more essential in-process operations have a higher priority than the one or more non-essential in-process operations.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising reordering the in-process operations and executing the in-process operations in order of priority such that the one or more essential in-process operations are executed within the power hold-up time and the one or more non-essential in-process operations are not executed.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the one or more non-essential in-process operations are terminated in order of priority beginning with a lowest priority in-process operation and proceeding toward the one or more essential in-process operations without terminating the one or more essential in-process operations.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the in-process operations are prioritized based on one or more of an amount of remaining power, an amount of power required to complete an operation, a percentage of an operation that has completed, an execution importance of an operation, and whether an operation has been acknowledged.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more non-essential in-process operations comprise one or more of an un-acknowledged write operations, an erase operation, and a read operation.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising powering off the nonvolatile memory device without executing the one or more non-essential in-process operations.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein terminating the one or more non-essential in-process operations comprises skipping the one or more non-essential in-process operations in one or more command queues such that the one or more non-essential in-process operations are not performed on the non-volatile memory device.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more essential in-process operations comprise one or more write operations that have been acknowledged to one or more clients of the nonvolatile memory device.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein terminating the one or more non-essential in-process operations comprises resetting one or more nonvolatile memory components of the nonvolatile memory device.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the essential in-process operations are executed on the one or more nonvolatile memory components in response to resetting the one or more nonvolatile memory components.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the one or more nonvolatile memory components comprise one or more banks of nonvolatile memory components currently processing the one or more non-essential in-process operations, each bank comprising a plurality of nonvolatile memory dies.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising quiescing operation of one or more subcomponents of the nonvolatile memory device in response to determining that the power source has failed to supply electric power above the predefined threshold.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein executing the one or more essential in-process operations comprises flushing buffered incomplete data associated with the one or more essential in-process operations to nonvolatile memory of the nonvolatile memory device such that the nonvolatile memory stores the buffered incomplete data within the power hold-up time.

16. An apparatus for power reduction management, the apparatus comprising:

a monitor module configured to determine that a power source has failed to supply electric power above a predefined threshold to a nonvolatile storage device;

an identification module configured to determine a prioritization of in-process operations for the nonvolatile storage device; and

a termination module configured to terminate one or more in-process operations based on the prioritization of in-process operations such that one or more essential in-process operations execute within a power hold-up time for the nonvolatile storage device.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, further comprising a corruption module configured to discard data received during a corruption period occurring prior to the monitor module determining that the power source has failed to supply electric power above the predefined threshold.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the corruption module is configured to halt a flow of data into a write data pipeline for the nonvolatile storage device in response to the monitor module determining that the power source has failed to supply electric power above the predefined threshold.

19. A system for power reduction management, the system comprising:

a nonvolatile data storage device comprising a plurality of nonvolatile memory components;

a monitor module configured to determine that a primary power source has failed to supply electric power above a predefined threshold to the nonvolatile data storage device;

a termination module configured to reset one or more of the plurality of nonvolatile memory components executing non-essential in-process operations such that one or more essential in-process operations execute on the one or more nonvolatile memory components within a power hold-up time.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising a secondary power source configured to supply electric power to the nonvolatile data storage device for at least the power hold-up time.

21. A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium storing computer usable program code executable to perform operations for power reduction management, the operations comprising:

initiating a power loss mode in a nonvolatile memory device in response to a power source failing to supply electric power above a predefined threshold;

interrupting one or more in-process erase operations executing on one or more nonvolatile memory components of the nonvolatile memory device during the power loss mode; and

executing one or more pending write operations on the one or more nonvolatile memory components in response to interrupting the one or more in-process erase operations such that the one or more pending write operations complete within a power hold-up time.

22. The computer program product of claim 21, wherein the operations further comprise quiescing operation of one or more subcomponents of the nonvolatile memory device in response to initiating the power loss mode.

23. The computer program product of claim 21, wherein the operations further comprise discarding data received during a corruption period occurring prior to initiating the power loss mode.

24. An apparatus for power reduction management, the apparatus comprising:

means for determining that a primary power source has failed to supply electric power above a predefined threshold to a nonvolatile data storage device;

means for providing secondary electric power for the nonvolatile data storage device for at least a power hold up time; and

means for adjusting execution of operations on the nonvolatile data storage device such that one or more essential operations execute on the nonvolatile data storage device within the power hold up time.

25. The apparatus of claim 24, further comprising means for terminating one or more non-essential operations on the nonvolatile data storage during the power hold up time.