US Patent 10235402 Techniques for combining grid-encoded data storage systems

One or more grids of redundancy coded shards, such as those stored or otherwise represented on grid encoded storage systems, are combinable or extensible. For example, a generator matrix of a redundancy code may be configured so as to have a sufficient number of fields to generate a grid. The generator matrix may initially be used to generate smaller grids, which can be combined into the target grid without re-encoding most or all of the data represented thereon. In some cases, vertically derived shards of the input grids may be combined using, e.g., matrix addition, which may then be directly allocated to the target grid, while data shards and horizontally derived shards may be allocated to the target grid with no further transformation.