Spansion Llc.

Chin-Ghee Ch'ng

Sheau-Yang Ch'ng

Kuan-Cheng Tang

Kian Huat Hoo

Systems and methods for improving efficiency of a voltage booster for read mode operations of memory cells and discharging a boosted supply voltage safely are disclosed. The system contains a plurality of boosting stages coupled in series including a plurality of boosting capacitors, a plurality of isolators. The isolator can be used to prevent boosting of one capacitor from negatively affecting a charge of the other adjacent capacitor to improve the efficiency of the voltage booster. A voltage booster circuit can accurately boost a supply voltage with a suitable number of boosting stages depending on a level of the supply voltage being provided. Since boosters contain a suitable number of boosting stages, the boosters can discharge a boosted voltage sequentially. With this sequential discharge method, memory cells can not have a hot switching problem.

Voltage booster by isolation and delayed sequential discharge

Systems and methods for producing a boosted voltage which can be used as a boosted word line voltage for read mode operations of memory cells are disclosed. The system contains a VCC comparator, a look up table, and a boosting circuit including a set of boosting capacitors. The look up table has a list of trim codes that indicates desired boosting ratios. The boosting ratio can vary depending on a level of a supply voltage to provide a sufficient word line voltage, thereby preventing and/or mitigating delay in reading operations. The number of the capacitors in the boosting circuit can be predetermined to be turned on or off according to the trim code. Accordingly, the voltage boost circuit provides a sufficient boosted word line voltage to a core cell gate with flexibility despite fluctuation of the supply voltage level.

Flexible word line boosting across VCC supply

Systems and/or methods that facilitate accessing data in a memory are presented. The memory can be flash memory that includes a plurality of sectors in an array that can be associated with a decoder component that includes a regulator component, which facilitates performing read operations within a desired period of time. Each sector can be associated with a decoder subcomponent and associated regulator subcomponent. Parasitic resistance and capacitance elements can increase the further in distance a sector and associated decoder component are from a booster component, which is utilized to increase the voltage at a boost-strap node within each decoder subcomponent to facilitate performing read operations. To counter the parasitic elements, each regulator subcomponent can include one or more capacitors, where the number of capacitors and total capacitance value can be determined based on the distance the associated decoder subcomponent is from the booster component.

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Gelugor, Malaysia

Chin-Ghee Ch'ng