US 7,321,959 B2
Control method of a non-volatile memory apparatus
Toshiyuki Honda, Kyotanabe (Japan); Masayuki Toyama, Neyagawa (Japan); and Keisuke Sakai, Kyoto (Japan)
Assigned to Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Osaka (Japan)
Appl. No. 10/496,622
PCT Filed Sep. 29, 2003, PCT No. PCT/JP03/12448
§ 371(c)(1), (2), (4) Date May 25, 2004,
PCT Pub. No. WO2004/031966, PCT Pub. Date Apr. 15, 2004.
Claims priority of application No. 2002-290297 (JP), filed on Oct. 02, 2002.
Prior Publication US 2005/0013154 A1, Jan. 20, 2005
Int. Cl. G06F 12/00 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 711—156  [365/185.09; 365/185.33; 711/203] 5 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A control method of a non-volatile memory apparatus comprising:
a controlling step of controlling data writing and data readout of a non-volatile memory, by using an erased table and a logical address/physical address conversion table, the non-volatile memory having a plurality of physical blocks, each physical block being an erasing unit of data, the erased table indicating whether the physical blocks are erased or not, the logical address/physical address conversion table converting a logical address to a physical address;
a writing step; the writing step of including:
a first flag writing step of writing a fixed value on a first flag existing in a redundancy area on a first page of a physical block onto which data is to be written, a value of said first flag indicating whether data is to be written onto the first page of the physical block or not, the first page being within a plurality of pages which are included in said physical block, each page having a data area and the redundancy area, and each page being a minimum data writing unit, the first flag being included in each physical block; and
a data writing step of writing data onto the first page after the first flag writing step; and
an initialization step of reading out said first flag of all said physical blocks of said non-volatile memory at the startup of the non-volatile memory apparatus, and generating the logical address/physical address conversion table and the erased table based on whether said first flag is written or not.