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:
May. 22, 2001
Filed:
Dec. 10, 1999
Louis L. Hsu, Fishkill, NY (US);
Hans-Oliver Joachim, Munich, DE;
Matthew R. Wordeman, Mahopac, NY (US);
Hing Wong, Los Altos, CA (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A negative wordline DRAM array having n groups of m wordlines, in which one group is driven by a group decoder circuit (having a voltage swing between ground and a circuit high voltage (2 v)) and one driver circuit in each group is exposed to a boosted wordline high voltage (2.8 v) greater than the circuit high voltage, in which the wordline driver circuits have an output stage comprising a standard nfet in series with a high threshold voltage pfet, so that, during activation, the unselected driver circuits exposed to the boosted wordline high voltage have a very low leakage through the pfet, while the selected driver circuit has a high but tolerable leakage (2 &mgr;A) because Vqs on the nfet is nearly at the nfet threshold. The net active power from the entire array is less than that of a conventional configuration due to the reduced voltage swing, while the number of transistors exposed to high voltage stress is reduced from 9 to 1 and the number of buffer nfets required to reduce voltage drop across an active nfet is reduced from 8 to 1.