FAIL-SAFE MODULAR MEMORY

摘要

A modular fail-safe memory and an address generation mechanism that provides load balancing when the memory is shared by a number of processors (320). A plurality of memory modules (10a-m) are used for the memory with no specific limit on the number of memory modules, and a checksum block is used to back-up corresponding blocks in the other memory modules. The checksum blocks are distributed across the memory modules, and an address generation mechanism (Fig. 2 and 3) determines the checksum location for a specific memory block. This address generation mechanism ensures that checksum blocks are equally divided between the memory modules (10a-m) so that there is no memory bottleneck, is easy to implement in hardware, and is extended to provide similar properties when a module failure occurs.