Storage devices with soft processing

摘要

A storage device includes a storage array having a group of storage elements. Each storage element can written to a discrete set of physical states. A read circuit selects one or more storage elements and generates, for each selected storage element, an analog signal representative of the physical state of the selected storage element. A signal processing circuit processes the analog signal to generate a plurality of outputs, with each output representing a degree of an association of the selected storage element with a different subset of one or more of the discrete set of physical states.