Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080265982 | METHOD OF IMPROVING FUSE STATE DETECTION AND YIELD IN SEMICONDUCTOR APPLICATIONS - Disclosed are embodiments of an apparatus incorporating a detection circuit adapted for determining the state of selected fuses and a programming circuit for blowing selected fuses on demand. Also, disclosed are embodiments of an associated method. The detection circuit comprises a plurality of fuses in identical signal and reference legs in order to increase the signal margin for detecting blown fuses and/or current sources configured to pass offset currents through the signal and reference legs in order to set the trip point for detecting blown fuses between the un-blown and the minimum blown resistances. Thus, the invention provides the flexibility of single-sided fuse state detection devices with even greater sensitivity than both single-sided and differential fuse state detection device. | 10-30-2008 |
20090153228 | STRUCTURE FOR IMPROVING FUSE STATE DETECTION AND YIELD IN SEMICONDUCTOR APPLICATIONS - Disclosed is a design structure of an apparatus incorporating a detection circuit adapted for determining the state of selected fuses and a programming circuit for blowing selected fuses on demand. Also, disclosed are embodiments of an associated method. The detection circuit comprises a plurality of fuses in identical signal and reference legs in order to increase the signal margin for detecting blown fuses and/or current sources configured to pass offset currents through the signal and reference legs in order to set the trip point for detecting blown fuses between the un-blown and the minimum blown resistances. Thus, the invention provides the flexibility of single-sided fuse state detection devices with even greater sensitivity than both single-sided and differential fuse state detection device. | 06-18-2009 |
20090207650 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INTEGRATING DYNAMIC LEAKAGE REDUCTION WITH WRITE-ASSISTED SRAM ARCHITECTURE - A system for integrating dynamic leakage reduction with a write-assisted SRAM architecture includes power line selection circuitry associated with each column of one or more SRAM sub arrays, controlled by a selection signal that selects the associated sub array for a read or write operation, and by a column write signal that selects one of the columns of the sub arrays. The power line selection circuitry locally converts a first voltage, corresponding to a cell supply voltage for a read operation, to a second lower voltage to be supplied to each cell selected for a write operation, as to facilitate a write function. The power line selection circuitry also locally converts the first voltage to a third voltage to be supplied to power lines in unselected sub arrays, the third voltage also being lower than the first voltage so as to facilitate dynamic leakage reduction. | 08-20-2009 |
20130148455 | FINE GRANULARITY POWER GATING - An approach for providing fine granularity power gating of a memory array is described. In one embodiment, power supply lines are disposed in a horizontal dimension of the memory array parallel to the word lines that access cells arranged in rows and columns of the array, wherein each of the supply lines are shared by adjacent cells in the memory. Power supply lines that activate a row selected by one of the word lines are supplied a full-power voltage value and power supply lines that activate rows adjacent to the selected row are supplied a half-power voltage value, while the power supply lines of the remaining rows in the memory array are supplied a power-gated voltage value. | 06-13-2013 |