I think that's called Economy Picking.
Sweep picking is when you rake the strings quickly up or down and make it sound like you're playing each note seperately. Economy picking is staying in the same direction as you left off on the previous string. So if you were doing 3 notes per string, starting on the 6th string, you'd play down-up-down\down-up-down etc... instead of down-up-down\up-down-up