A SINGLE CHIP EMBEDDED MICROCONTROLLER HAVING MULTIPLE NON-VOLATILE ERASABLE PROMS SHARING A SINGLE HIGH VOLTAGE GENERATOR

摘要

A single chip embedded microcontroller has a processor (58) that communicates with multiple non-volatile erasable PROMS which may be an OTPROM (52) and an EEPROM (50). The processor also communicates with a high voltage generator (64) that produces the erase and write voltages for the OTPROM and EEPROM. A switch (66) communicates with the high voltage generator and switches the erase and write voltages alternately between the OTPROM and EEPROM. The OTPROM and EEPROM are FLASH arrays. The FLASH array technology allows the EEPROM and OTPROM to have similar erase and write voltages and therefore to share one high voltage generator. The high voltage generator is switched alternately between the first and second non-volatile erasable PROM arrays to enforce the principle that the EEPROM and OTPROM cannot be written to or erased at the same time and may only be written to or erased one at a time.