A method for use in a computer system provides a dynamic, "self tuning" soft-error-rate-discrimination (SERD) method and apparatus. Specially designed SRAMs or other circuits are "tuned" in a manner that gives them extreme susceptibility to cosmic neutron events (soft errors), higher than that of the "regular" SRAM components, memory modules or other components in the computer system. One such specially designed SRAM is deployed per server. An interface algorithm continuously sends read/write tr...

A storage system includes a set of mass storage media and a plurality of functional layers that provide a data storage path between a file system and the set of mass storage media. The storage system can detect that a write issued by the file system was lost by one of the functional layers that provide the data storage path between the file system and the mass storage media.

When a storage drive used as part of a redundant storage system is rebuilt, a drive controller obtains information for the rebuild process from an operating system (OS) specific agent. The information may include a bitmap, which indicates portions of a logical unit being used by the operating system. The bitmap is provided to a controller specific agent, which manipulates the bitmap into a form indicating which physical portions of the storage drive correspond to the portions of the logical unit...

A tool for testing an integrated circuit is provided. The tool includes a vector execution engine, a vector image generation engine and a vector display engine. The vector execution engine applies test patterns to the integrated circuit and captures error data being output from the test patterns. The vector image generation engine generates a file of expected output from the application of the test patterns to the integrated circuit. It should be appreciated that the generation of the vector ima...

A hard disk recording apparatus including: a receiving unit for receiving programs; a reservation data receiving unit for accepting input of reservation recording data including reservation recording starting time; a reservation data storing unit for storing the reservation recording data; a recording unit for recording the programs on a hard disk based on the reservation recording data, and having a self-diagnosis function for detecting the presence or absence of abnormalities of the hard disk;...

Method, apparatus and program product are provided for the invalidation of faulty metadata in a storage controller coupled to a host device. Faulty metadata may include metadata which no longer matches the associated customer data tracks stored on a DASD or other storage device. When faulty metadata is detected, metadata tracks are selected to be invalidated. A command is received through a host interface, without the controller being taken off-line from the host, and the specified metadata trac...

A method, apparatus, and computer instructions in a processor for checking assertions. A determination by the processor is made as to whether metadata for an assertion is associated with the memory location, in response to detecting a change in data in a memory location. The data to the assertion is compared by the processor, in response to the metadata being associated with the memory location. An error is generated by the processor if the assertion is invalid, with respect to the data. The pro...

A method for reducing soft error rates in semiconductor memory. In one embodiment, memory is partitioned into a) boot and download memory, b) program memory and c) data memory. Each partition receives protection according to the importance of the data stored. The boot memory is protected by sensing errors and repairing them utilizing on-chip data storage redundancy and exchange. The program memory is protected by sensing errors and repairing damaged data by reloading it using the program stored ...

A storage controller for a storage system in which there are multiple storage devices and a method for recording diagnostic information are provided. The storage controller includes a storage device manager which has means for allocating a storage device in the storage system for storing diagnostic data. The storage controller also includes means for generating diagnostic data regarding the operation of the storage controller. Two buffers are used for alternately recording and writing batches of...

Methods and apparatus are provided for use in testing a memory (230) coupled to a processing node (214). A background scrubber (316) in the processing node (214) is initialized to perform a test of the memory (230). A status of the background scrubber (316) is checked in which the status indicates whether an error occurred during the test. A predetermined action is taken in response to the status indicating that the error occurred during the test.