Patents by Inventor Philip L. Northcott

Philip L. Northcott 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).

  • Systems and methods for adaptively selecting from among a plurality of error correction coding schemes in a flash drive for robustness and low latency
    Patent number: 9183085
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application. Predefined gears correspond to different predefined ECC schemes. Based on an observed bit error rate, a gear from a set of predefined gears is selected for use for a particular region of memory. Each gear of the set of predefined gears includes a lower-latency ECC decode option and one or more higher-latency ECC decode options.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: November 10, 2015
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventor: Philip L. Northcott
  • Systems and methods for storing data in page stripes of a flash drive
    Patent number: 9176812
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application. Data is stored in page stripes. The page stripes can have varying amounts of payload capacity based on selected error correction code strength. Allocation blocks can be divided into journaling cells, correspond to minimum units of data for which a journaling engine or flash translation layer has a logical-to-physical mapping.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: November 3, 2015
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventors: Philip L. Northcott, Peter Dau Geiger, Jonathan Sadowsky
  • System and method for tolerating a failed page in a flash device
    Patent number: 9047214
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application. A page is associated with a set of primary ECC codewords, and a page stripe is associated with a set of secondary codewords and primary over secondary parity (PoSP) ECC codewords. Two or more page stripes can form a page grid, wherein the page grid is associated with a group of tertiary ECC codewords, wherein the last page stripe of the page grid has a reduced payload capacity.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: June 2, 2015
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventor: Philip L. Northcott
  • Systems and methods for adaptively selecting among different error correction coding schemes in a flash drive
    Patent number: 9021337
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: April 28, 2015
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventor: Philip L. Northcott
  • Systems and methods for recovering data from failed portions of a flash drive
    Patent number: 9021333
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: April 28, 2015
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventor: Philip L. Northcott
  • Systems and methods for redundantly storing error correction codes in a flash drive with secondary parity information spread out across each page of a group of pages
    Patent number: 9021336
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application. Both primary parity symbols for primary codewords and secondary parity symbols for secondary codewords are generated. The secondary parity symbols are spread out across each page of a group of pages.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: April 28, 2015
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventor: Philip L. Northcott
  • Systems and methods for initializing regions of a flash drive having diverse error correction coding (ECC) schemes
    Patent number: 8996957
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 31, 2015
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventor: Philip L. Northcott
  • Systems and methods for transparently varying error correction code strength in a flash drive
    Patent number: 8972824
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 3, 2015
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventors: Philip L. Northcott, Peter Dau Geiger, Jonathan Sadowsky
  • Systems and methods for reclaiming flash blocks of a flash drive
    Patent number: 8793556
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: July 29, 2014
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventors: Philip L. Northcott, Peter Dau Geiger, Jonathan Sadowsky
  • Systems and methods for low latency, high reliability error correction in a flash drive
    Patent number: 8788910
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: July 22, 2014
    Assignee: PMC-Sierra, Inc.
    Inventor: Philip L. Northcott