Hyundai Electronics America, Inc.

Aaron Yip

Yuan Tang

Hsingya Arthur Wang

Jein-Chen Young

Kenneth Miu

Haike Dong

Apparatus is provided to facilitate the process of bulk preprogramming each of the cells in a flash memory or a subblock of a flash memory. In the process, the source and drain of each cell to be preprogrammed is biased such that current need not be flowing between the source and drain through the cell's channel region for charge to be transferred between the cell's channel region and the cell's floating gate. In a specific embodiment, the sources and drains are left floating without any particular bias voltage and the control gates of the cells are set to between 9 and 12 volts above the substrate and held there for about 10 milliseconds (ms). In an alternate embodiment, the sources and drains of all of the cells to be preprogrammed are biased to the same potential, which is a negative voltage, ground, or a positive voltage.

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Milpitas, CA, United States of America

Aaron Yip