CONTEST
CompetedPartial Erase of Flash Memory
$25,000
This contest is closed.
Problem
Patexia seeks prior art for US Patent 6,233,174 (US ‘174) that allegedly describes a partial erasure method which reads selected cells from two different allocation groups on a nonvolatile memory into a data latch, overwrites the latched data from one of the allocations with erase data, proceeds with erasing the selected cells on the nonvolatile memory, and finally writes the latched data for both allocations back onto the nonvolatile memory.
Figure 1. Block Diagram of the Components of the Nonvolatile Memory System
Questions
- Was the reference filed or published before February 16th, 1998? (True/False)
- Does the reference describe a nonvolatile memory system which includes a controller, a data latch, and a plurality of memory cells allocated to one of two groups?
- Does the controller provide a partial erase operation which selects memory cells from each group, stores the data from the selected cells to the data latch, and writes erase data from an outside source onto the latched data from the second group?
- Does the controller continue the partial erase operation by erasing the data left on the selected memory cells from both groups, and afterwards programs the data pertaining to both groups from the data latch onto the respective memory cells?
Questions
# | Question | Value |
---|---|---|
1 | Was the reference filed or published before February 16th, 1998? | T/F |
2 | Does the reference describe a nonvolatile memory system which includes a controller, a data latch, and a plurality of memory cells allocated to one of two groups? | 20 |
3 | Does the controller provide a partial erase operation which selects memory cells from each group, stores the data from the selected cells to the data latch, and writes erase data from an outside source onto the latched data from the second group? | 40 |
4 | Does the controller continue the partial erase operation by erasing the data left on the selected memory cells from both groups, and afterwards programs the data pertaining to both groups from the data latch onto the respective memory cells? | 40 |
Additional Notes
This is a Prior Art Search contest aimed at determining if a patent idea was known and publicly available before a patent was filed.
This contest will close on Thursday, March 27th, 2014 at 11:59 PM PST.
This contest is subject to modified prize distribution awards:
- the top 2 submissions will be designated as winners and receive $5,000 each
- the next scored 4 submission will be designated as winners and receive receive $2,500 each
- the next scored submissions (to a maximum of 10) will be designated as runner-ups and receive a minimum of $500 each
Please review the Submission Rules and Style Guidelines as well as the Style Guidelines specific to this type of contest.
Please review the full list of known references.