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:
Nov. 09, 2004
Filed:
Jul. 15, 2003
Toru Tanzawa, Ebina, JP;
Kabushiki Kaishi Toshiba, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A nonvolatile semiconductor memory includes a plurality of nonvolatile memory cells each having a gate, a drain and a source to hold data corresponding to a threshold voltage level. The memory further includes a reference current generation circuit which generates a reference current, the reference current generation circuit including at least one reference cell and an amplification circuit which amplifies a current flowing through the reference cell, and a ratio of an amplification factor of current in a program verify mode to an amplification factor of current in a data read mode is larger than 1, and a sense amplifier which compares the reference current with a current flowing through selected ones of the nonvolatile memory cells and reads data held in the selected ones of the nonvolatile memory cells.