Patent ID: 8499117

Claim:
A method for writing and reading data in electrically erasable and programmable nonvolatile memory cells comprising: defining, in a virtual memory, logical pages including logical blocks; defining, in a first nonvolatile memory zone, erasable physical pages including programmable physical blocks corresponding to the logical blocks; defining, in a second nonvolatile memory zone distinct from the first memory zone, for each physical page of the first memory zone, a metadata structure forming a descriptor of the physical page, the descriptor including: a first field including information about a location of the physical page in the first nonvolatile memory zone; a second field including information about a location of a logical page in the virtual memory; and for each physical block of the physical page, a third field including: information about a location of the physical block in the physical page, information about a status of the physical block, the information being about one of the following statuses: erased block, block containing a valid data, and block containing an invalid data; and information about a location, in the logical page, of the logical block of which data is saved in the physical block.