Electronic apparatus with non-volatile memory and writing method thereof

• US 7,200,707 B2
• Filed: 07/01/2004
• Issued: 04/03/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/01/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Delta Electronics Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Delta Electronics Incorporated
• Inventors: Liu, Bao-Kim
• Primary Examiner(s): BATAILLE, PIERRE MICHE
• Application Number:
  US10/710,300
• Publication Number:
  US 20050002280A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,006 Days
• Field of Search: 711/103, 711/163, 711/154, 711/100, 711/162, 711/167, 365/185.3, 365/189.01, 365/185.29
• US Class Current: 711/103
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/14 Time supervision arrangements, e.g. real time clock

Abstract

An electronic apparatus with non-volatile memory and writing method thereof. For a specific address of a memory block of a non-volatile address memory, it can be written only one time per hour. The writing time limit of the non-volatile memory is significantly lengthened with the writing method in the present invention when writing times to a specific memory block of the non-volatile memory is limited.

Claims

1. An apparatus for storing time-relevant data, comprising:

a controller; and

a nonvolatile memory, the controller being coupled to the non-volatile memory, wherein the nonvolatile memory comprises at least two memory blocks, which are written by said controller once every a time unit, said two memory blocks corresponding to different addresses for storing data referring to the time unit, thereby lengthening a writing time limit of the nonvolatile memory.

2. The apparatus as recited in claim 1, wherein the time unit is a second.

3. The apparatus as recited in claim 1, wherein the time unit is a minute.

4. The apparatus as recited in claim 1, wherein the nonvolatile memory apparatus is an electrically erasable and programmable read only memory (EEPROM).

5. A method for writing time-relevant data to a nonvolatile memory of an electronic apparatus, comprising:

providing at least two different addresses of memory blocks of said nonvolatile memory for storing said data referring to the same time unit,

storing a first time-relevant data to the first memory block referring to a time unit once every a time unit; and

storing a second time-relevant data to the second memory block referring to said time unit once every the same time unit, thereby lengthening a writing time limit of the nonvolatile memory.

6. The method as recited in claim 5, wherein the time unit is a second.

7. The method as recited in claim 5, wherein the time unit is a minute.