Authors:
Bull Tsai, Clare Chou, Wade Huang, Hawaii Xuan
Abstract:
This disclosure proposes a new BIOS version that can read the thermal sensor under the SSD to help detect the presence of the SSD during the bootup process.
Background:
TGCS as well as our customers have occasionally encountered instances where the SSD fails to be properly identified during the booting process. It is an extremely low probability issue but we have seen it during testing as well as on customer's locations and then been unable to recreate the error successfully.
It could be several different component perspectives for this issue. We know that there is an existing detection pin in our current SSD interface and in the connector itself. It may also be involved with the SSD firmware or Chipset driver. None of them can really solve this intermediate issue for every project.
We cannot add too many retry mechanisms since the boot up time is also a critical factor to our POS system success. We can't add workarounds that will slow down the boot up time significantly.
Description:
Our disclosure is to offer an additional mechanism for SSD detection by leveraging the thermal sensor we have implemented under the SSD module which we use to read the temperature to ensure the thermal solution will be activated if it's hot or over the SSD temperature limits.
When we power up the system we need to detect the SSD, we can detect if the SSD is really populated or not by the temperature rising profile. If there is an SSD populated in the slot, we will understand it is unusual not detecting the SSD. We then have to do more work to identify if it's really an issue such as retry at this moment or send confirmation command to the SSD body.
With this implementation, we will be able to still maintain the right process of boot time and can help with the SSD lost issue upon those existing solutions.
- Read the thermal sensor mounted on the motherboard which is physically under or is covered by the SSD drive if it's mounted.
- If there is no SSD, the thermal sensor will not be covered by the SSD body which will be a relatively free air upon it.
- The BIOS mechanism is to detect the rising curve of the temperature while booting during power on.
- It can understand the difference between with SSD mounted and without SSD mounted.
- If there is an SSD mounted by detecting the temperature rising slope but it's not detected by the SSD electrical interface, that problem can be noted and assist in resolving the issue.
TGCS Reference 4600
