Patents by Inventor Philip D. Royall

Philip D. Royall has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Cyclic flash memory wear leveling
    Patent number: 7441067
    Abstract: A re-programmable non-volatile memory system, such as a flash EEPROM system, having its memory cells grouped into blocks of cells that are simultaneously erasable is operated in a manner to level out the wear of the individual blocks through repetitive erasing and re-programming. This may be accomplished without use of counts of the number of times the individual blocks experience erase and re-programming but such counts can optionally aid in carrying out the wear leveling process. Individual active physical blocks are chosen to be exchanged with those of an erased block pool in a predefined order.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 15, 2004
    Date of Patent: October 21, 2008
    Assignee: SanDisk Corporation
    Inventors: Sergey A. Gorobets, Alan D. Bennett, Peter J. Smith, Alan W. Sinclair, Kevin M. Conley, Philip D. Royall