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US 7,405,987 B1Granted
Low voltage, high gain current/voltage sense amplifier with improved read access time
AssigneeCypress Semiconductor Corporation
InventorGary P. Moscaluk
Life of this patent
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AssigneeCypress Semiconductor Corporation
InventorGary P. Moscaluk
Estimating the term…
A low voltage, high-gain current/voltage sense amplifier (ISA/VSA) circuit with improved read access time is provided herein. According to one embodiment, the ISA/VSA described herein includes a pair of current reference branches for generating a pair of reference currents in response to a pair of differential input signals supplied thereto. The differential input signals are differential voltages which are converted to differential currents by the current reference branches. In some cases, the current reference branches may be used for amplifying and mirroring the reference currents onto output nodes of the ISA/VSA. In doing so, the current reference branches may increase the amplification and improve the performance of the sense amp circuit, even under extreme mismatch conditions. In addition, positive feedback may be used within the ISA/VSA design to further increase the amplification and speed of the sense operation. The improvements described herein may, therefore, be used to obtain the fast read access times typically associated with high-speed memory devices.
A sense amplifier circuit having at least a sensing stage and an amplifying stage, the sensing stage comprising:
A memory device, comprising:
A method for operating a sense amplifier circuit, the method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.