Renesas Technology Corp.

Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha

Koichi Kawauchi

Yutaka Takikawa

Kazuo Nomura

Kazuyuki Kawamoto

Satoko Kamakura

Nobutaka Imanishi

Seiichiro Asari

Osamu Hosotani

Naoki Takahashi

A semiconductor memory is achieved which allows a reduction in the area of a memory array block without reducing the gate widths of floating gates. A plurality of select gates extend in straight lines in the X direction. Between the upper- and lower-side select gates, two rows' worth of floating gates are arranged. The plurality of floating gates are placed in a staggered arrangement (in other words, in a zigzag pattern). That is, looking at one floating gate in a specific column and another floating gate in a column adjacent to that specific column, those floating gates deviate from each other in the Y direction.

Semiconductor memory

A nonvolatile semiconductor memory device includes rewritable areas (M10, M20). A control circuit (110) controls a boosting circuit (2) and a writing circuit (10) such that a high voltage is generated from the boosting circuit, and data is written to the rewritable area designated by an address register/decoder (104) by means of the writing circuit. In response to an external signal which is at the 'H' level, the control circuit allows writing of data to the rewritable areas (M10, M20) by means of the writing circuit (9). In response to an external signal which is at the 'L' level, the control circuit prohibits rewriting of data in the rewritable area (M10), and allows rewriting of data in the rewritable area (M20). Therefore, even if the operation mode is erroneously set to the write mode because of unstable state of the power supply, data in the rewritable area is not destroyed.

Non-volatile semiconductor memory device with timer controlled re-write

A non-volatile semiconductor memory device comprises an area in which only one rewriting is possible and an area in which rewriting is possible repeatedly. A control circuit generates a high voltage from a boosting circuit and operates a writing circuit to write data in the rewritable area whose address designated by an address register/decoder. The control circuit allows writing of data into the area in which only one rewriting is possible by the writing circuit in response to an external signal. Therefore, even if the writing mode is set influenced by the unstable state of the power supply, destruction of the data in the area in which only one rewriting is possible can be prevented.

Non-volatile semiconductor memory device having an area responsive to

An address control device changes the internal address corresponding to the address at which an error occurred to a new address if an error is detected in a data word during a read from a main memory device. The address control device specifies a different memory area during subsequent data writes and does not use the memory area in which the previous error occurred. Moreover, if the error detection device detects an error while a data word is read from the main memory device, a correction device corrects the data word.

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Hyogo, Japan

Koichi Kawauchi