The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 06, 1998
Filed:
Dec. 24, 1996
Applicant:
Inventors:
Assignee:
SGS-Thomson Micrelectronics, S.r.l., Agrate Brianza, IT;
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G11C / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
36518529 ; 365218 ;
Abstract
The invention relates to a method of erasing an electrically programmable non-volatile memory device constructed as a multi-sector matrix memory and being of the type with an erase algorithm integrated into the device. The method comprises the following steps of: erasing some or all of the matrix sectors in parallel; subsequently reading and checking each erased sector; storing the address of a sector being checked when the issue of a check is unfavorable; carrying out a fresh parallel erasing step; and starting a new reading/checking step from the sector that has checked unfavorably.