INTEGRATED CIRCUIT WITH FLASH BRIDGE AND AUTOLOAD

摘要

This invention relates to the structure and design of integrated circuits (ICs), in particular to the embedding or integration of a non-volatile, so-called flash memory into ICs. To solve the issues created by speed differrences of the embedded flash memory compared to the other components on an IC, in particular the microprocessor and/or other memory on the IC, a specific writing interface is provided for the flash memory which makes the latter appear like standard memory from a software viewpoint. This writing interface includes a bank of registers (2) between flash memory (7) and microprocessor (6), essentially being operated by a write controller (1) and a flash bus arbiter (8) and acting, in principle, as a intermediate buffering mechanism controlled by a state machine.