| US 7,596,657 B2 | ||
| Increased storage capacity for solid state disks using data compression | ||
| Paul Kaler, 1112A Edwards St., Houston, Tex. 77007 (US) | ||
| Filed on Jan. 10, 2007, as Appl. No. 11/652,158. | ||
| Claims priority of provisional application 60/758403, filed on Jan. 13, 2006. | ||
| Prior Publication US 2007/0168624 A1, Jul. 19, 2007 | ||
| Int. Cl. G06F 13/00 (2006.01) | ||
| U.S. Cl. 711—103 [711/154; 711/165] | 19 Claims |
| 1. A method of increasing the storage capacity of a solid state disk (SSD) device through data compression, the SSD coupled
to a host computer system and comprising a non-volatile storage module (NVSM) and a volatile memory (VM), said method comprising:
associating the SSD with a predetermined compression ratio of n to 1, where n is a value greater than 1;
reporting an initial virtual storage capacity to the host computer system that is n times the physical storage capacity of
the VM;
establishing an overflow buffer in the NVSM;
monitoring the available virtual capacity of the VM based on the current compression ratio and the amount of data currently
stored therein;
storing data to the overflow buffer whenever the available virtual capacity falls below that necessary to successfully process
a pending storage operation requested by the host computer system; and
populating data stored in the overflow buffer to the VM when the amount of available virtual capacity of the VM can accommodate
the data.
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