Solid state disk on module with high speed data transmission

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention

[0002] The present invention relates to a solid state disk on module with high speed data transmission, and particularly to a solid state disk on module, which utilizes serial ATA interface for data transmission.

[0003] 2. Description of Related Art

[0004] The IDE interface being used as a data transmission interface of the solid state disk on module has been applied in various industrial computer systems. However, comparing to a new data transmission interface-Serial ATA, the IDE interface provides relatively slower data transmission speed because the transmission speed of Serial ATA has reached to 1.5 Gbits/sec and it will become 6.0 Gbits/sec. Hence, the data bank provides such a high speed that it has greatly overrode the transmission speed of the conventional parallel type IDE interface. (The speed of ultra ATA is possible to reach 100 Mbytes/sec).

[0005] Accordingly, for the computer periphery equipment, how to increase the transmission speed of the solid state disk on module and to be compatible with the interface of the industrial computer so as to afford the user a better application and meet our operation habit is a subject worth us to care.

[0006] From the preceding analysis of deficiencies of the prior art, the IDE interface has a limited transmission speed so that the data transmission speed is unable to be increased effectively and another bottleneck is the access speed of the flash memory is limited. In order to overcome the preceding shortcomings thoroughly, the IDE interface has been removed from the solid state disk on module in the present invention and a high speed transmission interface, Serial ATA, is adopted in the computer system instead. Meanwhile, in order to enhance the data access of the flash memory in addition to Serial ATA interface being utilized to increase the transmission speed in the interface passage greatly, a novel circuit structure has been disclosed accompanying renewal preceding interface specification such that the data transmission speed of the solid state disk on model can be increased tremendously.

[0011] Referring to FIG. 1, a block diagram of a solid stated disk on module according to the present invention is illustrated. When a signal is transmitted to a Serial Advance Technology Attachment (SATA) interface controller 2 via a SATA interface connecting device 1, the SATA signal can be transferred as digital data with the interface controller 2 so as to be transmitted to and stored in a memory array 3 and vise versa. That is, the digital data stored in the memory array 3 is taken out as soon as a data read request from the host is received by the interface controller 2 and the digital data is transferred as the SATA signal format so as to be sent to the host via the SATA interface connecting device 1 such that the operation of data read can be completed.

[0012] Although the solid state disk on module with high speed interface shown in FIG. 1 has been disclosed in the present invention, the feature of high speed thereof is incapable of being brought into play sufficiently due to the flash memory providing limited speed of reading and writing. In order to enhance the feature of high speed, it is necessary to improve the system illustrated in FIG. 1.

[0013] Referring to FIG. 2, a revised block diagram is shown and the difference of FIG. 2 from FIG. 1 is a circuit of cache memory 4 is added. That is, the data is written into the cache memory 4, which has a faster writing speed, by the interface controller 2 before the data being written into the memory array 3 and the interface controller 2 further notifies the system that the operation of data read has been completed already. Thus, the data can be written into the memory array 3 from the cache memory 4 during a time interval before a next instruction of the system being received. In this way, the waiting time, which the system has to spend, can be shortened so the job done by the system can be completed much earlier than expected.

[0014] Besides, the SRAM is usually used as the cache memory and the data temporarily stored in the SRAM may become damage or lost in case of an accidental blackout and the data still in the SRAM. Hence, in order to solve the preceding problem, a non-volatilized memory such as Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM) or a Ferroelectric RAM (FeRAM) is used for being written in data instead of the SRAM because of the non-volatilized memory providing a feature of not volatilizing data as the flash memory does and having an advantage of fast recording. Hence, it is possible for the present invention not only to write in data speedily as the SRAM does but also to prevent the data being lost in case of blackout accidentally. Once, the power is supplied again, the interface controller 2 can \write the data temporarily stored in the non-volatilized memory into the flash memory array 3 to complete unfinished operation due to blackout.

[0015] Referring to FIG. 3, a physical solid state disk on module with high speed interface is illustrated. A SATA solid state disk on module 100 has a printed circuit board 101 attached with a SATA interface controller 102 and a data memory or a data memory array 103, which is coupled to the SATA interface controller 102. Further, a SATA interface connecting device 104 is coupled to the host such that the SATA solid state disk on module of the present invention and the system can be set up completely. In practice, the interface connecting device 104 is the SATA interface connector or gold contacts so that the SATA interface connecting device 10 can be adapted to the system based on the demand of the system.

[0016] While the invention has been described with reference to the a preferred embodiment thereof, it is to be understood that modifications or variations may be easily made without departing from the spirit of this invention, which is defined by the appended claims.