Myong-Jae Kim

A 3.3-V single power supply 16-Mb nonvolatile virtual DRAM using a NAND flash memory technology

A 3.3-V 16-Mb nonvolatile memory having operation virtually identical to DRAM with package pin compatibility has been developed. Read and write operations are fully DRAM compatible except for a longer RAS precharge time after write. Fast random access time of 63 ns with the NAND flash memory cell is achieved by using a hierarchical row decoder scheme and a unique folded bit-line architecture which also allows bit-by-bit program verify and inhibit operation. Fast page mode with a column address access time of 21 ns is achieved by sensing and latching 4 k cells simultaneously. To allow byte alterability, nonvolatile restore operation with self-contained erase is developed. Self-contained erase is word-line based, and increased cell disturb due to the word-line based erase is relaxed by adding a boosted bit-line scheme to a conventional self-boosting technique. The device is fabricated in a 0.5-/spl mu/m triple-well, p-substrate CMOS process using two-metal and three-poly interconnect layers. A resulting die size is 86.6 mm/sup 2/, and the effective cell size including the overhead of string select transistors is 2.0 /spl mu/m/sup 2/.

A 3.3 V 16 Mb nonvolatile virtual DRAM using a NAND flash memory technology

A 3.3V 16Mb nonvolatile memory has read and write operations fully DRAM-compatible except a longer RAS precharge time after write. Most systems with high-performance processors use a shadow nonvolatile memory uploaded to a fast DRAM to obtain zero wait-state performance. The introduced nonvolatile virtual DRAM (NVDRAM) eliminates the need for this redundancy, achieving high performance while reducing power consumption. Fast random access time (tRAC) with a NAND flash memory cell is achieved by using a folded bit-line architecture, and DRAM comparable column address access time (tkA) is achieved by sensing and latching 4k cells simultaneously.