Patent ID: 7228377

Claim:
A semiconductor device comprising: a flash memory including nonvolatile memory cells configured to allow data to be written to and to be erased from the nonvolatile memory cells in units of blocks; and an EEPROM which includes nonvolatile memory cells configured to allow data to be written to and to be erased from the nonvolatile memory cells in units of bytes; wherein the flash memory is configured to store a plurality of applications, wherein each application of the plurality of applications includes a program for carrying out tasks of the application and data to be processed by the program, wherein the EEPROM comprises a first memory area and a second memory area, wherein when a first application of the plurality of applications is activated, data of the first application is loaded from the flash memory into the first memory area of the EEPROM, wherein the second memory area of the EEPROM is configured to store data of a second application of the plurality of applications, and wherein the first memory area is configured to retain data of the first application until a third application of the plurality of applications is activated.