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:
Sep. 12, 2000
Filed:
May. 26, 1999
Benny Ma, Saratoga, CA (US);
Lattice Semiconductor Corporation, Hillsboro, OR (US);
Abstract
In a programmable integrated circuit, by providing a static random access memory (SRAM) cell in each electrically erasable (E.sup.2) non-volatile memory cell, testing time of circuits configured by the E.sup.2 non-volatile memory cells can be reduced substantially. In one embodiment, the SRAM cell can be included by providing a small number of transistors to recirculate the output value of an inverting buffer. During testing, a logic value is written into the SRAM cell in place of the logic value in the non-volatile storage of the E.sup.2 non-volatile memory cell. In one embodiment, the E.sup.2 non-volatile memory cell can be used in conjunction with a 1-bit shift-register. Multiple 1-bit shift registers can be used as a scan chain to scan into the SRAM cells of multiple E.sup.2 non-volatile memory cells.