Storing Address of Spare in Failed Memory Location

摘要

In one embodiment, a system includes a memory that includes a live section and a spares section. The live section may be mapped to the address space of the system, and may be accessed in response to memory operations. Once an entry in the live section has been detected as failed, an entry is in the spares section may be allocated to replace the failed entry. During subsequent accesses to the failed entry, the allocated entry may be used instead. In an embodiment, the failed entry may be coded with an indication of the allocated entry, to redirect to the allocated entry. In one implementation, for example, the failed entry may be coded with N copies of a pointer to the allocated entry, each copy protected by corresponding ECC.

主权项

1. A system comprising:
a memory; and an integrated circuit (IC) coupled to the memory, wherein: the memory is divided into a live partition and a spares area; the live partition is divided into a plurality of entries, and each entry of the plurality of entries stores a status indication, a block of data, and error correction code (ECC) data; during a write to a first entry of the plurality of entries by the IC, the status indication is checked to ensure that the first entry has not previously failed, and the write is performed responsive to the status indication indicating that the first entry has not previously failed; a result of the write is checked and, if a failure is detected, the IC is configured to select an unused spare entry from the spares area and to write the block of data and ECC data to the spare entry; and the IC is configured to write the status indication in the first entry to indicate failure in response to detecting the failure.