Patent ID: 8429338

Claim:
A method of emulating a byte-wise programmable memory in a sector-wise erasable memory comprising: a) dividing said sector-wise erasable memory into a plurality of sectors; b) dividing each of said sectors into a plurality of memory locations, each memory location defining a container, each container being arranged to store a header and a payload portion; and c) storing a P bits data value relating to an application in said payload portion of one of said containers and header information in said one of said containers, wherein said containers comprise block containers, said payload portion comprises M-bits, wherein M>P, and said storing said P-bits data value in said payload portion is performed in such a way that said M-bits payload portion represents said P-bits data value in a unique way and said storing of said P-bits comprises the following actions: c1) reading stored payload data from the payload portion of a container and deriving a stored data value relating to said application by performing an arithmetic function on said read stored payload data; c2) calculating new payload data in dependence on the data value to be stored and the stored data value, such that said data value to be stored can be derived from said new payload data by performing said arithmetic function on said new payload data; and c3) storing the new payload data in the payload portion of said container.