A phase change memory device comprises a photolithographically formed phase change memory cell having first and second electrodes and a phase change element positioned between and electrically coupling the opposed contact elements of the electrodes to one another. The mechanism ensures that, as polygon textures are processed by a texture engine, all of the memory requests associated with a portion of a given graphics texture are issued by all texture pipelines before any texture pipeline may issue a memory request for another portion of a graphics texture. Furthermore, a method of minesweeping using the device and an array of the devices is disclosed.