[PATCH] Newly erased page read workaround

[Artem Bityutskiy]

On Fri, 2011-04-01 at 16:04 +0200, Ivan Djelic wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 01, 2011 at 02:04:41PM +0100, Artem Bityutskiy wrote:
> > On Fri, 2011-04-01 at 14:14 +0200, Ivan Djelic wrote:
> > > Did you consider this idea: if you have an unused byte available in oob,
> > > program it to 0x00 when a page is programmed.
> > 
> > I guess this depends on the the controller, but probably this could mean
> > a substantial write  overhead, not?
> 
> Sorry, my explanation was probably not very clear.
> 
> When you program a page, you send data and oob contents to your NAND controller.
> The controller may modify oob contents to add ECC bytes, in a more or less
> automatic way, then it will physically program the page.

Right, I just assumed that some controllers allow you to send only data,
and programming OOB would be a separate operation. But if this is not
the case in ST's HW - then this sounds like a very good approach!

> > > That way, you just need to check a single byte when you read a page in order
> > > to distinguish erased pages from programmed pages. And by counting the number
> > > of 1s in the byte, you can be robust to bitflips.
> > 
> > Could you please explain some more what do you mean? So you write the
> > 0x00 byte. Then when you read, you count the number of "1" bits in the
> > byte. And what exactly this count gives you and to which bitflips you
> > become robust?
> 
> I meant that you can be robust to bitflips occurring in the marker byte itself.
> If you just compare the marker byte to 0x00 or 0xff, you will not be able to
> handle values such as 0x01 or 0x7f (occuring because of bitflips).
> You can count the number of 1s in the marker, and decide for instance:
> count < 4   => marker is 0x00
> count >= 4  => marker is 0xff
> That way, the marker is reliable up to 3 bitflips (which is very improbable in
> the same byte).

I see.

I'm curious, if the OOB area is so unreliable, how can we trust it to
store our ECC? We need a mini-ECC for the ECC then?

> Let us assume Vipin implements the marker idea. He reads a page, and the marker
> test tells him the page has never been programmed. So he will avoid performing
> ECC correction on that page. But that page could nevertheless contains bitflips
> (i.e. not all bytes equal to 0xFF). He could memset page data with 0xFFs to
> blindly remove possible bitflips, as if the ECC engine had fixed them.

Ah, I see. Although hiding bit-flips from upper layers might be not the
best idea sometimes.

-- 
Best Regards,
Artem Bityutskiy (Артём Битюцкий)