Patents Assigned to Silicon Motion, Inc.
  • Patent number: 11630769
    Abstract: A memory controller includes a buffer memory and a microprocessor. The buffer memory includes at least a first cache memory and a second cache memory. The microprocessor is configured to control access of a flash memory device. The microprocessor is configured to obtain a number of spare blocks of the flash memory device corresponding to a first operation period, determine a write speed compensation value, determine a target write speed according to the write speed compensation value and a balance speed, and determine a target garbage collection speed according to the target write speed. The microprocessor is further configured to perform one or more write operations in response to one or more write commands received from a host device in the first operation period according to the target write speed and perform at least one garbage collection operation according to the target garbage collection speed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 8, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2023
    Assignee: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Tsung-Yao Chiang
  • Patent number: 11630580
    Abstract: A method of a flash controller to be coupled between a flash memory device and a host device is provided. The flash memory device has a plurality of blocks each having a plurality of pages, and the method comprises: receiving a trim/erase/unmap command from the host device; obtaining a storage space, which is to be erased, from the trim/erase/unmap command; comparing a space size of the storage space with a threshold to determine whether the space size is larger than the threshold; and resetting valid page counts of the plurality of blocks of the flash memory device when the space size is larger than the threshold.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 20, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2023
    Assignee: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Hsu-Ping Ou
  • Patent number: 11630602
    Abstract: A method and associated apparatus for performing access management of a memory device with aid of dedicated bit information are provided. The method includes: transmitting a compact hybrid table comprising multiple compressed tables to a host device, for being stored in the host device, to allow the host device to send one of multiple compact hybrid table entries of the compact hybrid table to the memory device as reading reference; determining a starting logical address and a data length according to a read command packet from the host device, and determining a first mapping relationship and the dedicated bit information according to the read command packet; determining second mapping relationship(s) according to the first mapping relationship and the dedicated bit information; and reading the data from the NV memory for the host device at least according to the first mapping relationship and the second mapping relationship(s).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 16, 2022
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2023
    Assignee: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Yu-Chih Lin
  • Patent number: 11630590
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for performing access control of a memory device with aid of aggressor bit information are provided. The method includes: receiving a first host read command from a host device; sending a first read command to the NV memory in order to try reading first data from a first page; sending a second read command to the NV memory to obtain soft-decoding information and performing a first soft-decoding operation according to the soft-decoding information in order to try obtaining the first data from the first soft-decoding operation; reading multiple bits from at least one aggressor page to be the aggressor bit information; converting the soft-decoding information into adjusted soft-decoding information according to the aggressor bit information of the at least one aggressor page; and performing a second soft-decoding operation according to the adjusted soft-decoding information to obtain the first data from the second soft-decoding operation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 11, 2022
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2023
    Assignee: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Tsung-Chieh Yang
  • Patent number: 11630601
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for performing access control of a memory device with aid of a multi-phase memory-mapped queue are provided. The method includes: receiving a first host command from a host device; and in response to the first host command, utilizing a processing circuit within the controller to send a first operation command to the NV memory through a control logic circuit of the controller, and trigger a first set of secondary processing circuits within the controller to operate and interact via the multi-phase memory-mapped queue, for accessing the first data for the host device, wherein the processing circuit and the first set of secondary processing circuits share the multi-phase memory-mapped queue, and use the multi-phase memory-mapped queue as multiple chained message queues associated with multiple phases, respectively, for performing message queuing for a chained processing architecture including the processing circuit and the first set of secondary processing circuits.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 1, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2023
    Assignee: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventors: Cheng Yi, Kaihong Wang, Sheng-I Hsu, I-Ling Tseng
  • Patent number: 11630768
    Abstract: A flash memory controller includes a read only memory (ROM) and a microprocessor. The ROM is arranged to store a program code. The microprocessor is arranged to execute the program code to control access of a flash memory module. When executing the program code, the microprocessor is arranged to perform operations of: monitoring data retention state of one or more blocks in the flash memory module by reading a last page of the one or more blocks to obtain time information regarding the one or more blocks, which is generated by the flash memory controller; and arranging a specific block to a garbage collection process if time information obtained from the last page of the specific block exceeds a threshold.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 29, 2022
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2023
    Assignee: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventors: Jian-Dong Du, Chia-Jung Hsiao, Pi-Ju Tsai
  • Patent number: 11630780
    Abstract: A flash memory controller includes a processor and a cache. When the processor receives a specific write command and specific data a host, the processor stores the specific data into a region of the cache, and the processor generates host-based cache information or flash-memory-based cache information to build or update/optimize a binary tree with fewer number of nodes to improve the searching speed of the binary tree, reducing computation overhead of multiple cores in the flash memory controller, and minimizing the number of accessing the cache to reduce the total latency wherein the host-based cache information may indicate dynamic data length and flash-memory-based cache information indicates the data length of one writing unit such as one page in flash memory chip.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 6, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2023
    Assignee: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Kuan-Hui Li
  • Patent number: 11630604
    Abstract: The present invention provides a method for controlling a data storage device. The data storage device includes a flash memory controller and a flash memory module. The flash memory controller has a first buffer memory and a second buffer memory. The memory module has at least a first memory portion and a second memory portion. The method includes: receiving a first data from a host device; storing the first data in the first buffer memory; transmitting the first data to the first memory portion of the flash memory module from the first buffer memory; and transmitting the first data to a host memory buffer in the host device from the first buffer memory. The first data corresponds to at least a portion of a second data to be written to the second memory portion.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 29, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2023
    Assignee: SILICON MOTION INC.
    Inventor: Hong-Jung Hsu
  • Patent number: 11625345
    Abstract: A method for controlling data transmission mode of an SD memory card device, which at least operates under an SD mode, includes: sending a first power signal from an electronic device to the SD memory card device via pin VDD1 to control and make the SD memory card device enter an initial state; and, sending a second power signal via one of a pin VDD2 and a pin VDD3 to the SD memory card device, to control and make the SD memory card device enter an Linkup state of a PCIe mode wherein a voltage level of the second power signal is lower than a voltage level of the first power signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 30, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 11, 2023
    Assignee: SILICON MOTION INC.
    Inventor: Chao-Kuei Hsieh
  • Publication number: 20230105153
    Abstract: A method for performing communications specification version control of a memory device in predetermined communications architecture with aid of compatibility management, associated apparatus and computer-readable medium are provided.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 28, 2022
    Publication date: April 6, 2023
    Applicant: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventors: Hong-Ren Fang, Chun-Che Yang, Cheng-Yu Lee, Te-Kai Wang
  • Publication number: 20230103723
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for programming data into flash memory. The method includes: obtaining, by the accelerator, an execution table indicating that data related to the first virtual carrier need to go through a mid-end and a back-end processing stages earlier than data related to other virtual carriers; driving, by the routing engine, a host interface (I/F) to obtain data associated with all cargos in the second virtual carrier, updating the second cargo flags with third cargo flags to indicate that data associated with all the cargos in the second virtual carrier are prepared in the front-end processing stage; and determining, by the accelerator, that data associated with any cargo in the first virtual carrier hasn’t been prepared according to information of the first cargo flags, and disallowing the second virtual carrier to proceed to the following processing stages.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 2, 2022
    Publication date: April 6, 2023
    Applicant: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Shen-Ting CHIU
  • Publication number: 20230104892
    Abstract: A method for performing access management in a memory device, the associated memory device and the controller thereof, and the associated electronic device are provided. The method may include: receiving a host command and a logical address from a host device; performing at least one checking operation to obtain at least one checking result, for determining whether to load a logical-to-physical (L2P) table from the NV memory to a random access memory (RAM) of the memory device, wherein the L2P table includes address mapping information for accessing the target data, and performing the at least one checking operation to obtain at least one checking result includes checking whether a first L2P-table index pointing toward the L2P table and a second L2P-table index sent from the host device are equivalent to each other; and reading the target data from the NV memory, and sending the target data to the host device.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 9, 2022
    Publication date: April 6, 2023
    Applicant: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventors: Jie-Hao Lee, Cheng-Yu Yu
  • Publication number: 20230106393
    Abstract: A method for performing automatic setting control of a memory device in predetermined communications architecture with aid of auxiliary setting management and associated apparatus are provided.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 27, 2022
    Publication date: April 6, 2023
    Applicant: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Han-Cheng Huang
  • Publication number: 20230094250
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method, and an apparatus for programming data into flash memory. The method includes: reading operating settings of a virtual carrier; setting a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) engine for driving the RAID engine to complete a designated encryption or encoding operation on first data associated with the virtual carrier when the operation settings indicate that the first data associated with the virtual carrier need to go through a mid-end processing stage; and sending a programming index to a data access engine for driving the data access engine to read a programming table from the SRAM, and program the second data associated with the virtual carrier into a designated address in a flash module when the operation settings indicate that the second data associated with the virtual carrier need to go through the back-end processing stage.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 2, 2022
    Publication date: March 30, 2023
    Applicant: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Shen-Ting CHIU
  • Publication number: 20230100865
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and an apparatus for accessing to encoding-history information. The method includes: providing a super-block formed by storage space of flash units, where the super-block includes zones, each zone includes super-page strings, and each super-page string includes pages across the flash units; and programming encoding-history information into a metadata section of a designated first page of a designated super-page string, thereby enabling a damaged page that is occurred in the designated super-page string of the designated zone to be recovered according to the encoding-history information. The encoding-history information includes a history profile and history entries. The history profile indicates which zone or zones are covered in the super-block, and a quantity of the history entries.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 2, 2022
    Publication date: March 30, 2023
    Applicant: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Shen-Ting CHIU
  • Publication number: 20230099396
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and an apparatus for programming data into flash memory. The method includes: generating a front-end parameter set, a mid-end parameter set and a back-end parameter set for each data-programming transaction; transmitting the front-end parameter set of each data-programming transaction to a routing engine, thereby enabling the routing engine to drive a host interface (I/F) to obtain from the host side; transmitting the mid-end parameter set of each data-programming transaction to an accelerator, thereby enabling the accelerator to drive the RAID engine to encrypt raw data or generate parity-page data according to multiple pages of the raw data; and transmitting the back-end parameter set of each data-programming transaction to the accelerator, thereby enabling the accelerator to drive a data access engine to program source data into a designated physical address of a flash module.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 2, 2022
    Publication date: March 30, 2023
    Applicant: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Shen-Ting CHIU
  • Publication number: 20230094268
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method, and an apparatus for programming data into flash memory. The method includes: driving, by the routing engine, a host interface (I/F) according to the front-end parameter set when determining that a front-end processing stage needs to be activated for the data-programming transaction; driving, by the accelerator, a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) engine according to the mid-end parameter set when receiving an activation message of the data-programming transaction from the routing engine and determining that a mid-end processing stage needs to be activated; and driving, by the accelerator, a data access engine according to the back-end parameter set when determining that the mid-end processing stage for the data-write transaction does not need to be activated or the mid-end processing stage for the data-write transaction has been completed, and a back-end processing stage for the data-write transaction needs to be activated.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 2, 2022
    Publication date: March 30, 2023
    Applicant: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Shen-Ting CHIU
  • Patent number: 11614998
    Abstract: A multi-screen display control device includes a plurality of graphics processing units (GPUs) and a watchdog chip. The GPUs transform image data that a host transfers to the multi-screen display control device through a universal serial bus (USB) interface into a plurality of high-definition multi-media interface (HDMI) sub-images to be displayed by a plurality of screens. The watchdog chip is coupled to the GPUs and, when any of the GPUs crashes, the watchdog chip outputs a reset signal to reset all of the GPUs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 19, 2021
    Date of Patent: March 28, 2023
    Assignee: SILICON MOTION, INC.
    Inventors: Chengliang Qi, Guangjun Lyu, Cong Li
  • Patent number: 11614885
    Abstract: A data storage device includes a memory device and a memory controller. The memory controller is configured to configure a predetermined memory block as an active memory block to receive data from a host device and accordingly record a plurality of logical addresses in a first mapping table. In response to a determination of recommending for activating one or more sub-regions of the memory device or delivering one or more Host Performance Booster (HPB) entries is required, the memory controller is further configured to update a second mapping table based on the first mapping table before delivering the HPB entries to the host device. The memory controller is further configured to generate the HPB entries according to the second mapping table after the second mapping table has been updated based on the first mapping table and deliver a packet comprising the HPB entries to the host device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 28, 2021
    Date of Patent: March 28, 2023
    Assignee: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Yu-Ta Chen
  • Publication number: 20230080339
    Abstract: An exemplary method for reading data stored in a flash memory includes: selecting an initial gate voltage combination from a plurality of predetermined gate voltage combination options; controlling a plurality of memory units in the flash memory according to the initial gate voltage combination, and reading a plurality of bit sequences; performing a codeword error correction upon the plurality of bit sequences, and determining if the codeword error correction successful; if the codeword error correction is not successful, determining an electric charge distribution parameter; determining a target gate voltage combination corresponding to the electric charge distribution parameter by using a look-up table; and controlling the plurality of memory units to read a plurality of updated bit sequences according to the target gate voltage combination.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 21, 2022
    Publication date: March 16, 2023
    Applicant: Silicon Motion, Inc.
    Inventor: Tsung-Chieh Yang