Patent ID: 7773022

Claim:
A system to store digital information, the system comprising: a plurality of flash memory cells, each memory cell adapted to receive charge during a write operation to an analog voltage corresponding to a data value, wherein the data value comprises a binary representation having a first number of bits; an analog interface to detect the analog voltage from each memory cell during a read operation; an analog-to-digital converter to convert the detected analog voltage from each memory cell into a digital representation of the detected analog voltage during a read operation of each cell, wherein the digital representation of the detected analog voltage comprises a second number of bits, and the second number of bits is greater than the first number of bits; and a processor to determine the data value from the digital representation of the analog voltage, wherein each data value is selected from a set of possible data values, each possible data value corresponds to a range of digital values, and the processor determines the data value by comparing the digital representation of the analog voltage to at least one of the ranges of digital values.