DUAL REFERENCE CELL SENSING SCHEME FOR NON-VOLATILE MEMORY

The present invention provides a dual reference cell sensing scheme for non-volatile memory. A high voltage reference cell and a low voltage reference cell are individually coupled to two sense amplifiers for providing two distinct reference voltages for comparison against the memory cell voltage. T...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors HO, HSIN-YI, KUO, NAI-PING, HUNG, CHUN-HSIUNG, CHEN, GIN-LIANG, HO, WEN-CHIAO, LIOU, HO-CHUN
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
Published 30.12.2004
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Summary:The present invention provides a dual reference cell sensing scheme for non-volatile memory. A high voltage reference cell and a low voltage reference cell are individually coupled to two sense amplifiers for providing two distinct reference voltages for comparison against the memory cell voltage. The output of the two sense amplifiers is further connected to a second stage sense amplifier to determine the status of the memory. The dual reference cell sensing scheme provides an increased sensing window which increases performance under low voltage application. The dual reference cell sensing scheme can be implemented by either voltage-based, current-based, or ground.