Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Ulsi Engineering Corp.

Hitachi Tohbu Semiconductor, Ltd.

Hironori Iwasaki

Takao Okubo

Masamichi Kishi

Shigeru Kadowaki

Satoru Nakanishi

Shigeru Suzuki

Manabu Inoue

Yasuro Kubota

A non-volatile memory, such as a flash memory card, using a rewritable non-volatile memory is provided with an improved write-protect arrangement. The non-volatile memory includes a collectively electrically erasable and writable memory (e.g., a flash memory), a reset IC for generating a power-on reset signal upon turn-on of the power supply, and a card controller for performing control between each flash memory device and a memory card interface. The flash memory is set with a write protect save register written with an address of an area desired to be subjected to write protect, the write protect save register belonging to an attribute area, and a protect range is set from the system. Since the address to be write-protected is itself written in the non-volatile flash memory, the address will continue to be stored, even if the power is turned off. A method for software write protection control is also provided.

Non-volatile memory, memory card and information processing apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Fuchu, Japan

Hironori Iwasaki