The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 25, 1998
Filed:
Feb. 22, 1997
Applicant:
Inventors:
Vishal Sarin, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Vikram Kowshik, San Jose, CA (US);
Andy Teng-Feng Yu, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Assignee:
Programmable Microelectronics Corporation, San Jose, CA (US);
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G11C / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
36518521 ; 36518523 ; 36518525 ; 36518909 ; 3652335 ;
Abstract
A sensing circuit charges the bit lines of an associated memory array using one or more large-area pass transistors during reading operations of a selected memory cell of the memory array. In this manner, the read speed of the memory array is independent of the channel current of the memory cell. A sink transistor sinks a constant current from the selected bit line during reading to improve the noise margin of the sensing circuit so that memory arrays associated with the sensing circuit do not require the reference bit lines.