Patent ID: 7457908
Filing Date: 2008-11-25
Classification: G11C

Abstract:
1. An integrated memory device including: a flash memory having an address parallelism and a data parallelism, the flash memory being partitioned into a plurality of blocks each one including a plurality of sectors being erasable individually, a communication interface for receiving a command from an external bus having a transfer parallelism lower than the address parallelism and the data parallelism, the command including a selection field for selecting a random subset of multiple sectors of at least one block, control means for executing an erase operation corresponding to the command in respect of each selected sector; wherein the command includes a main code identifying the erase operation and a secondary code having a first value, a second value or a third value, when the secondary code has the first value the selection field selecting each sector of a block individually and the control means erasing each selected sector, when the secondary code has the second value the selection field selecting a single block and the control means erasing all the sectors of the selected block, and when the secondary code has the third value the selection field selecting a single sector and the control means erasing the selected sector; and wherein an erase command requires first and a second communication cycles with the external bus each one involving the transmission of a command field, an address field and a data field, in the first communication cycle the command field including the main code and the data field including the secondary code, and in the second communication cycle when the secondary code has the first value the address field including the address of the selected block and the data field including the selection mask, when the secondary field has the second value the address field including the address of the selected block, and when the secondary field has the third value the address field including the address of the selected sector.