Patent ID: 8042021

Claim:
A memory apparatus comprising: a plurality of flash memories; a flash interface circuit; and a one or more ECC circuits, wherein the flash interface circuit controls operation of the plurality of flash memories; the flash interface circuit performs an access control of the plurality of flash memories in response to an external access instruction, and an alternation control for substituting a storage area of an access error-related flash memory with another storage area; each of the plurality of flash memories includes a plurality of sectors, the alternation control being performed individually for each of the plurality of flash memories; the flash interface circuit causes the plurality of flash memories to operate for parallel access in the access control, and issues addresses, of which a first address is for a first flash memory and a second address is for a second flash memory; the flash interface circuit controls issuing the addresses, such that the first address and the second address indicate same location sectors, when both of the sector of the first flash memory indicated by the first address and the sector of the second flash memory indicated by the second address are valid; the flash interface circuit controls issuing the addresses, such that the first address and the second address indicate different location sectors, when the sector of the first flash memory indicated by the first address is valid and a sector of the second flash memory on same location of the sector of the first flash memory indicated by the first address is invalid; the one or more ECC circuits add an error detection code to write-data written into the plurality of flash memories and conduct an error detection and correction for read-data from the plurality of flash memories, the one or more ECC circuits being as many as the number of the parallel access operations; and the one or more ECC circuits perform input/output operations in a parallel manner at an operation frequency which is equal to the input/output operation frequency of the parallel access operated flash memories.