Data Protection

Protection of the nonvolatile data in a flash device has always been an important consideration. Several Flash products feature dynamic hardware block-locking, so that critical code can be kept secure while non-locked blocks are programmed and erased. This locking scheme offers two levels of protection. The first allows software-only control of block locking (useful for frequently-changed data blocks), while the second requires hardware interaction before locking can be changed, protecting infrequently-changed code blocks. This locking capability is different by product family.