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US 5,351,216 AGranted
Premature termination of microcontroller EEPROM write
AssigneeMicrochip Technology Incorporated
InventorsTom Salt, Rodney Drake, Ray Allen
Life of this patent
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AssigneeMicrochip Technology Incorporated
InventorsTom Salt, Rodney Drake, Ray Allen
Estimating the term…
A single chip, semiconductor microcontroller device is adapted to control an aspect of the operation of an external system. The device includes a CPU, program memory for storing instructions to be selectively executed by the CPU to perform the control functions, and peripheral EEPROM data memory adapted to be written to for storing selected data in selected ones of a multiplicity of addresses of the data memory and for selective retrieval of the stored dam by the CPU within its control function. Internal logic in the device is implemented to abort a write operation in progress on the EEPROM data memory upon occurrence of an asynchronous reset of the device. An error flag is set by the logic to indicate that the write operation is being aborted, and the data that was partially written to the EEPROM memory at the time the write operation was aborted is held intact.
A semiconductor microcontroller device fabricated in a single integrated circuit chip for controlling the operation of an external system, comprising:
A process of operating a semiconductor microcontroller device fabricated in a single integrated circuit chip for controlling the operation of an external system, the device including a CPU, a program memory adapted to store instructions for execution by the CPU to control the operation of said external system, and an EEPROM data memory adapted to be written to during a write cycle for temporarily storing data in predetermined address locations for selective retrieval by the CPU in conjunction with the control function of the CPU, the process comprising the device-implemented steps of:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.