US 12,449,996 B2
Free space management in storage devices having non-uniform-sized memory blocks
Disha Gundecha, Punte (IN); and Raghavendra Gopalakrishnan, Bangalore (IN)
Assigned to SANDISK TECHNOLOGIES, INC., Milpitas, CA (US)
Filed by SANDISK TECHNOLOGIES, INC., Milpitas, CA (US)
Filed on Aug. 21, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/235,975.
Prior Publication US 2025/0068347 A1, Feb. 27, 2025
Int. Cl. G06F 3/06 (2006.01)
CPC G06F 3/064 (2013.01) [G06F 3/0608 (2013.01); G06F 3/0673 (2013.01)] 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A storage device to maintain a uniformed host write-to-relocation write ratio for data written to a memory device that includes varying physical block sizes, wherein the storage device is communicatively coupled to a host device and the memory device, the storage device comprises:
a balancing module to ensure that free blocks exist in a partition on the memory device and to define a garbage collection threshold based on blocks available in the partition; and
a controller to receive host data from the host device, write the host data to the memory device; and relocate the host data in the memory device during a background operation,
wherein the controller initiates the background operation on the memory device at the garbage collection threshold and executes the background operation responsive to a host write-to-relocation write ratio meeting a dynamically calculated size of remaining free blocks in the partition, the dynamically calculated size being calculated when the number of remaining free blocks in the partition is equal to the garbage collection threshold divided by a smallest block capacity in the partition.