[May 22, 2013] International Business Machines Assigned Patent for Reducing Current Draw of a Plurality of Solid State Drives at Computer Startup Tweet (Targeted News Service Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) By Targeted News Service ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 22 -- International Business Machines, Armonk, N.Y., has been assigned a patent (8,447,998) developed by Mark E. Andresen, Cary, N.C., and Joaquin F. Pacheco, Cary, N.C., for "reducing current draw of a plurality of solid state drives at computer startup." The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Reducing current draw of solid state drives from a shared power supply of a computer at computer startup, each SSD including computer memory, a capacitor, a disk controller, and a charge controller, the disk controller configured to enable the charge controller to charge the capacitor upon receiving a charge command, the SSDs organized into startup groups characterized by a position in a predefined startup order. Upon startup of the computer, beginning with a first startup group in the predefined startup order and until the last startup group in the predefined startup order has received a charge command, embodiments include, sending, by a storage device initiator, a charge command to a startup group to initiate charging of the capacitor of each solid state drive in the startup group and waiting a predefined period of time before sending another charge command to a next startup group in the predefined startup order." The patent application was filed on May 22, 2012 (13/477,257). The full-text of the patent can be found at http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,447,998.PN.&OS=PN/8,447,998&RS=PN/8,447,998 Written by Kusum Sangma; edited by Anand Kumar. KS0522AK0522-880105 (c) 2013 Targeted News Service [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]