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. 02, 2006
Filed:
Sep. 10, 2002
Hieu Van Tran, San Jose, CA (US);
Jack Edward Frayer, Boulder Creek, CA (US);
William John Saiki, Mountain View, CA (US);
Michael Stephen Briner, San Jose, CA (US);
Hieu Van Tran, San Jose, CA (US);
Jack Edward Frayer, Boulder Creek, CA (US);
William John Saiki, Mountain View, CA (US);
Michael Stephen Briner, San Jose, CA (US);
Silicon Storage Technology, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
A digital multilevel non-volatile memory includes a massive sensing system that includes a plurality of sense amplifiers disposed adjacent subarrays of memory cells. The sense amplifier includes a high speed load, a wide output range intermediate stage and a low impedance output driver. The high speed load provides high speed sensing. The wide output range provides a sensing margin at high speed on the comparison node. The low impedance output driver drives a heavy noisy load of a differential comparator. A precharge circuit coupled to the input and output of the sense amplifier increases the speed of sensing. A differential comparator has an architecture that includes analog bootstrap. A reference sense amplifier has the same architecture as the differential amplifier to reduce errors in offset. The reference differential amplifier also includes a signal multiplexing for detecting the contents of redundant cells and reference cells.