Patent ID: 8010710

Claim:
A system comprising: a signal provider for providing an initial serial input signal including a search device type and a search number; a signal receiver for receiving a final serial output signal containing a device type determination result; and a serial interconnection configuration of first to N-th semiconductor memory devices, N being an integer greater than one, each of the semiconductor memory devices having a semiconductor memory associated therewith, and a device type, the device type being related to the semiconductor memory; each i-th semiconductor memory device of the first to N-th semiconductor memory devices, where i is one to N, being configured to receive the initial serial input signal or a serial input signal from a previous semiconductor memory device, each i-th semiconductor memory device of the first to N-th semiconductor memory devices being configured to provide a serial output signal including an intermediate search device type and an intermediate search number as the serial input signal for the (i+1)-th semiconductor memory device except for the i=N-th semiconductor memory device for providing the final serial output signal, each i-th semiconductor memory device including a device type determiner for comparing the device type of the i-th semiconductor memory device to the search device type or the intermediate search device type, to provide a device type determination, a number modifier for modifying the search number or the intermediate search number in response to the device type determination to provide an output search number with or without being modified to the (i+1)-th semiconductor memory device or the signal receiver, a device type modifier for modifying the search device type or the intermediate search device type to an other device type in response to the device type determination to provide an output search device type with or without being modified to the (i+1)-th semiconductor memory device or the signal receiver, the output search number and the output search device type corresponding to the serial output signal or the final serial output signal.