Abstract:
The invention relates to a driving circuit for row decoding which is also useful in non-volatile memory devices of the multi-level Flash type and allows the overall capacitive load, as seen from the program voltage generator and the read/verify voltage generator, to be drastically reduced without involving segmentation of the decoding.
Abstract:
This invention relates to a non-volatile memory device (20) with configurable row redundancy, comprising:
a non-volatile memory (11) comprising of at least one matrix (11') of memory cells and at least one matrix (11") of redundant memory cells, both organised into rows and columns; row and column decoding circuits (12,13); read and modify circuits for reading and modifying data stored in the memory cells; and at least one associative memory matrix (14), also organised into rows and columns, able to store the addresses of faulty rows, and control circuits for controlling the associative memory matrix.
The memory device (20) of this invention further comprises:
at least one circuit for recognising and comparing selected row addresses (ADr) with faulty row addresses (ADrr) contained in the associative memory matrix (14), such as to produce de-selection of the faulty row and selection of the corresponding redundant cell row in the event of a valid recognition; and at least one configuration register (17), also comprising a matrix of non-volatile memory cells, and associated control circuits.
Abstract:
When programming, for each programming pulse, a threshold voltage whose value is increased with respect to the previous programming pulse is applied to the gate terminal of each cell to be programmed. After an initial step, the increase of threshold voltage of the cell being programmed becomes equal to the applied gate voltage increase (ΔV GP ). In order to reduce the global programming time, keeping a small variability interval of threshold voltages associated with each level, to pass from a threshold level to a following one, each cell to be programmed is supplied with a plurality of consecutive pulses without verify (107-109), until it immediately goes below the voltage level to be programmed, and then a verify step (110) is performed, followed by subsequent programming and verify steps (112, 110, 117, 118) until the cell to be programmed reaches the desired threshold value.