A current-mode sense amplifier for low voltage non-volatile memories

Abstract

The market demand for high speed and low voltage non-volatile memories asks for much more efficient sense amplifiers. Actually a good sense amplifier works with 5 V power supply and is able to detect the cell content in less than 20 ns but in the future these constraints will become 3 V for power supply and less than 10 ns for sensing time. In this paper a 3 V power supply with 9 ns sensing time current mode sense amplifier is presented. It has been designed for a very small EPROM array and integrated in a 0.8 /spl mu/m technology (0.6 /spl mu/m in the matrix). Experimental result shows the overall sensing time to be lower than 10 ns even with 2.7 V power supply.