International Business Machines Corporation

Other

Infineon Technologies Ag

Dmitry G Netis

Toshiaki Kirihata

Louis L Hsu

Brian L Ji

L Brian Ji

Gerhard Mueller

Heinz Hoenigschmid

John M Ross

A semiconductor structure (and method for manufacturing the same) comprises an active array of first elements having a first manufacturing precision, a peripheral region surrounding the active array, the peripheral region including second elements having a second manufacturing precision less than the first manufacturing precision, wherein the second elements are isolated from the active array and comprise passive devices for improving operations of the active array.

Metal oxide semiconductor capacitor utilizing dummy lithographic patterns

A memory structure comprises a plurality of banks (each of the banks including a plurality of blocks) a plurality of timing critical address lines connected to all of the blocks in respective ones of the banks (a number of the critical address lines being equal to a number of the banks), and a plurality of dedicated address lines connected to respective ones of the blocks.

Hierarchical row activation method for banking control in multi-bank DRAM

A memory decoder system is disclosed. In an exemplary embodiment of the invention, the system includes a matrix of memory cells, arranged into rows and columns, with a plurality of wordline drivers corresponding to each row in the matrix. A group of wordline driver-decoder blocks each contains a subset of the plurality of wordline drivers therein, with each of the wordline driver-decoder blocks being separated by a row control block. The row control block includes control circuitry for the wordline drivers. For any given wordline driver-decoder block, a first group of wordline drivers contained therein is controlled by a row control block located on one side of the given wordline driver-decoder block, while a second group of wordline drivers contained therein is controlled by a row control block located on an opposite side of the given wordline driver-decoder block.

Wordline decoder system and method

An integrated circuit memory device comprising an arrangement of physical wordlines, WL0-WLn, arrange such that each wordline is addressed by a plurality of pairs, An&plus;1, An, of logical row address bits, and such that at least one pair of logical row address bits, corresponding to physically adjacent wordlines Wlm, Wlm&plus;1, Wlm&plus;2 in succession, cycles between binary states which encode the ternary results A, B and C in succession. The ternary results A, B or C are used to determine which two bitlines of a possible three bitlines are selected by a multiplexer which connects the bitlines to a sense amplifier for determining the state of a bit stored in a memory cell accessed by an activated wordline and a selected bitline. Preferably, the ternary results A, B and C are respectively encoded by said binary states of said pair of logical row address bits, said binary states being &ldquo;00,&rdquo; &ldquo;01,&rdquo; and &ldquo;10&rdquo; respectively.

Binary to binary-encoded-ternary (BET) decoder using reordered logic

There is provided a semiconductor memory device that includes: a plurality of memory cells arranged in at least two groups; at least one sense amplifier; a first and a second multiplexer; and at least one programmable control device. Each multiplexer is adapted to couple at least one of the groups to the amplifier. The programmable control device is adapted to control the first and said second multiplexers. In one embodiment, the programmable control device is adapted to control the multiplexers independently.

Semiconductor memory with programmable bitline multiplexers

An arrangement of enhanced drivability transistors is disclosed herein which includes a plurality of conductor patterns, wherein the conductor patterns include ring-shaped portions which enclose device diffusion contacts and the ring-shaped portions form the gate conductors of insulated gate field effect transistors (IGFETs).

Wordline driver circuit using ring-shaped devices

A wordline activation delay monitor circuit is disclosed wherein at least one sample wordline and a sample wordline redundancy are located within the same data-storing array region of a memory, and a sample wordline selector is coupled to activate the sample wordline or sample wordline redundancy based on the state of a nonvolatile input. The wordline selector circuit may include one or both of a row decoder circuit or a wordline driver circuit which have substantially the same structure and location as row decoder circuits and wordline driver circuits used to activate wordlines within the data-storing array region.

Robust wordline activation delay monitor using a plurality of sample wordlines

A wordline activation delay monitor circuit is disclosed herein which includes a sample wordline located within a data-storing array of a memory, wherein the sample wordline is selected or activated by circuitry having substantially the same structure or location within the memory as circuitry which selects or activates wordlines of the data-storing array. A circuit is disclosed which determines a wordline activation delay for a first subarray group within the memory by activating a sample wordline which is located within a data-storing array of a second subarray group. Corresponding methods are also disclosed.

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Brooklyn, NY, United States of America

Dmitry G Netis