Patent ID: 7298654

Claim:
A method of erasing a non-volatile memory device, the method comprising: resetting pass information registers corresponding to a plurality of sectors in the non-volatile memory device; simultaneously applying an erase voltage to the plurality of sectors; sequentially performing erase verification on each of the plurality of sectors; storing pass/fail information for each of the sectors in the pass information registers based on the erase verification; simultaneously applying an erase voltage to failed sectors according to the pass/fail information; and sequentially performing a post-program operation on the plurality of sectors upon determining that there are no failed sectors according to the pass/fail information; wherein sequentially performing the post-program operation on the plurality of sectors comprises: (a) initializing a first sector address; (b) performing the post-program operation on a sector corresponding to the sector address; (c) determining whether the sector corresponding to the first sector address is a final sector; and, (d) incrementing the sector address and repeating (b), (c), and (d) upon determining that the sector corresponding to the first sector address is not a final sector.