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. 24, 1999
Filed:
Dec. 31, 1997
Chinh D Nguyen, San Jose, CA (US);
Programmable Microelectronics Corporation, San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A non-volatile latch is disclosed which includes four PMOS floating gate memory cells arranged in a 2.times.2 matrix. Binary data values are written to the latch by the threshold voltage of the cells, where a first binary value is written by programming all the cells, and the second binary value is written by leaving all the cells in an erased state. Thus, since a program operation is required when writing only one of the binary value, high program voltages and floating gate charge times are eliminated when writing the other binary value. After a read operation in which the binary value stored in the cells is provided as output, this binary value is automatically latched in a latch circuit. In this manner, subsequent reads to the latch do not require accessing the cells.