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:
Apr. 06, 2004
Filed:
Aug. 28, 2002
Micron Technology, Inc., Boise, ID (US);
Abstract
Methods and apparatus to facilitate erasure of multiple sectors of a memory device without the need for externally-supplied erase potentials are advantageous for device testing. During a scan of sector addresses, sector tagging blocks of a memory device provide an output signal to a write state machine indicating whether the addressed sector is tagged for erasure. The sector tagging blocks facilitate resetting of tags on a global basis and setting of tags on a single, bank-wide and/or global basis. Once initiated, the erase operation proceeds to erase each tagged sector of the memory device in sequence without the need for externally-supplied erase potentials and without the need for further direction of the tester hardware. The methods are particularly useful for erasing all sectors of a memory device or all sectors of one memory bank of the memory device.