X Sense AMP memory
AssigneeNational Semiconductor Corporation
InventorsJoel A. Karp, Ilbok Lee, John A. Reed
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A semiconductor memory is comprised of a semiconductor substrate having first and second spaced apart arrays of memory cells disposed thereon. A plurality of first pairs of bit lines couple to the cells of the first array, and a corresponding plurality of second pairs of bit lines couple to the cells of the second array. Disposed between each first pair and corresponding second pair of bit lines is one X sense amplifier. This amplifier includes a set node selectively coupled to one bit line of the first pair and to one bit line of the second pair, and a reset node selectively coupled to the opposite bit lines of the first and second pair for selectively sensing charge on the four bit lines.
Claims7
A semiconductor memory comprised of:
- a semiconductor substrate;
- a column of N sense amplifiers disposed on said substrate where N is any integer;
- each of said sense amplifiers consisting of only one pair of transistors that are cross-coupled to form a set node, a reset node, and a sense enable node;
- 2N rows of single transistor memory cells disposed on said substrate on one side of said column of sense amplifiers such that each of said sense amplifiers are respectively aligned with first and second rows thereof, plus another 2N rows of single transistor memory cells disposed on said substrate on the opposite side of said column of sense amplifiers such that each of said sense amplifiers are respectively aligned with third and fourth rows thereof;
- 2N transistors coupling said first rows to the set node and said third rows to the reset node of the respectively aligned amplifiers in response to one control signal, plus another 2N transistors coupling said second row to the reset node and said fourth row to the set node of the respectively aligned amplifiers in response to another control signal;
- and
- a decoder disposed on said substrate at one end of said another 2N rows of memory cells for selectively reading data from anyone of said N sense amplifiers and for selectively setting and resetting the sense amplifier to write data into the memory cells connected thereto.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.