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:
May. 29, 2012
Filed:
Nov. 17, 2010
Randall Wayne Melton, Colorado Springs, CO (US);
Brad Phillip Garner, Colorado Springs, CO (US);
Kerry David Maletsky, Monument, CO (US);
Randall Wayne Melton, Colorado Springs, CO (US);
Brad Phillip Garner, Colorado Springs, CO (US);
Kerry David Maletsky, Monument, CO (US);
Atmel Corporation, San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A counter is efficiently implemented in non-volatile memory by using two binary counters and selectively using one or the other as a current counter. Writes to the binary counters are minimized by using two linear counters and using the state of the binary counters to determine which binary counter contains the current count. Write operations can be performed to the 'not current' binary counter with the final write operation being to the linear counters. The linear counter write operations can be in program-only mode so that a power failure will not result in a loss of counts.