According to the embodiments, an external storage device switches to an interface controller for supporting only a read operation of nonvolatile memory when a shift condition for shifting to a read only mode is met. A host device switches to an interface driver for supporting only the read operation of the nonvolatile memory when determining to recognize as read only memory based on information acquired from the external storage device.

In one example in accordance with the present disclosure, a system for handling memory errors includes a memory module having volatile components and non-volatile components. The system includes a BIOS chip having BIOS code and a BIOS non-volatile (NV) memory. The BIOS NV memory stores error data associated with the memory module that was stored prior to a power-on or reset of the system. The system includes a processor to execute the BIOS code to, after the power-on or reset of the system end before an operating system is loaded; (1) read, from the BIOS NV memory, the error data; and (2) determine, based on the error data, whether to take a corrective action with respect to the memory module.

Memory corruption detection technologies are described. A processor can include a memory to store a memory corruption detection (MCD) table. A processor core of the processor can receive, from an application, an allocation request for an allocation of a memory object within a contiguous memory block in the memory. The processor core can allocate the contiguous memory block in view of a size of the memory object requested and write MCD meta-data into the MCD table, including a MCD identifier (ID) associated with the contiguous memory block and a MCD border value indicating a size of a memory region of the contiguous memory block.

A processor implementing techniques to supporting fault information delivery is disclosed. In one embodiment, the processor includes a memory controller unit to access an enclave page cache (EPC) and a processor core coupled to the memory controller unit. The processor core to detect a fault associated with accessing the EPC and generate an error code associated with the fault. The error code reflects an EPC-related fault cause. The processor core is further to encode the error code into a data structure associated with the processor core. The data structure is for monitoring a hardware state related to the processor core.

A determination that a first programming operation has been performed on a particular memory cell can be made. A determination can be made, based on one or more threshold criteria, whether the particular memory cell has transitioned from a state associated with a decreased error rate to another state associated with an increased error rate. In response to determining that the particular memory cell has transitioned from the state associated with the decreased error rate to the another state associated with the increased error rate, an operation can be performed on the particular memory cell to transition the particular memory cell from the another state associated with the increased error rate to the state associated with the decreased error rate.

An apparatus has tag checking circuitry responsive to a target address to: identify a guard tag stored in a memory system in association with a block of one or more memory locations, the block containing a target memory location identified by the target address, perform a tag check based on the guard tag and an address tag associated with the target address, and in response to detecting a mismatch in the tag check, perform an error response action. The apparatus also has tag mapping storage circuitry to store mapping information indicative of a mapping between guard tag values and corresponding address tag values. The tag checking circuitry remaps at least one of the guard tag and the address tag based on the mapping information stored by the tag mapping storage circuitry to generate a remapped tag for use in the tag check.

A memory controller includes a memory channel controller adapted to receive memory access requests and dispatch associated commands addressable in a system memory address space to a non-volatile storage class memory (SCM) module. The non-volatile error reporting circuit identifies error conditions associated with the non-volatile SCM module and maps the error conditions from a first number of possible error conditions associated with the non-volatile SCM module to a second, smaller number of virtual error types for reporting to an error monitoring module of a host operating system, the mapping based at least on a classification that the error condition will or will not have a deleterious effect on an executable process running on the host operating system.

Memory having a controller configured to cause the memory to determine a respective raw data value of a plurality of possible raw data values for each memory cell of a plurality of memory cells, count occurrences of each raw data value for a first set of memory cells of the plurality of memory cells, store a cumulative number of occurrences for each raw data value, determine a plurality of valleys of the stored cumulative number of occurrences for each raw data value with each valley corresponding to a respective raw data value of the plurality of possible raw data values, and, for each memory cell of a second set of memory cells of the plurality of memory cells, determine a data value for that memory cell in response to the raw data value for that memory cell and the respective raw data values of the plurality of valleys.

Systems and methods for area-efficient mitigation of errors that are caused by row hammer attacks and the like in a memory media device are described. The counters for counting row accesses are maintained in a content addressable memory (CAM) the provides fast access times. The detection of errors is deterministically performed while maintaining a number of row access counters that is smaller than the total number of rows protected in the memory media device. The circuitry for the detection and mitigation may be in the memory media device or in a memory controller to which the memory media device attaches. The memory media device may be dynamic random access memory (DRAM).

A Solid State Drive (SSD) is disclosed. The SSD may comprise flash storage for data, the flash storage organized into a plurality of blocks. A controller may manage reading data from and writing data to the flash storage. Metadata storage may store device-based log data for errors in the SSD. Identification firmware may identify a block responsive to the device-based log data. In some embodiments of the inventive concept, verification firmware may determine whether the suspect block is predicted to fail responsive to both precise block-based data and the device-based log data.