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US 6,205,070 B1Granted
Current sense amplifier
AssigneeU.S. Philips Corporation
InventorsEvert Seevinck, Lodewijk P. Bellefroid, Rene Segaar
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AssigneeU.S. Philips Corporation
InventorsEvert Seevinck, Lodewijk P. Bellefroid, Rene Segaar
Estimating the term…
A memory in an integrated circuit contains a current sense amplifier. The current sense amplifier contains a first and second input transistor with cross-coupled gates and drains, each transistor having a source coupled to a respective memory bit line. The current from the drains of the first and second input transistor is guided to source-drain channels of the first and second load transistor respectively. The drains of the first and second input transistor are coupled to a common node via source-gate links of the first and second load transistor respectively. The gate/source voltage drops of the first and second load transistor are arranged in a direction opposite to a direction of gate/source voltage drops of the first and second input transistor between the complementary bit lines and the common node.
An integrated circuit comprising a memory that includes:
An integrated circuit comprising memory bitlines, a memory cell coupled to the memory bitlines and a current sense amplifier coupled to the memory bitlines and having a first and second output transistor having drains for supplying buffered differential currents determined by a logic state of the memory cell, characterized in that the drain of the first output transistor is coupled to an output node and the drain of the second output transistor is coupled to the output node via a current mirror, so that the first and second output transistor determine a supply and a drain of current from the output node respectively, a current gain of the first output transistor being a factor smaller than a combined current gain of the second output transistor and the current mirror, the factor being less than one, but greater than a ratio between currents drawn by the bitlines when the memory cell is actively connected to the bitlines.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.