Spansion Assigned Patent

Spansion LLC, Sunnyvale, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,699,273) developed by Evrim Binboga, Pleasanton, CA, for a “bitline voltage regulation in non-volatile memory.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems and methods are provided to minimize write disturb conditions in an untargeted memory cell of a non-volatile memory array. Bitline driver circuits are provided to control a ramped voltage applied both to a bitline of a target memory cell and a neighboring bitline of an untargeted memory cell. Various embodiments advantageously maintain the integrity of data stored in the untargeted memory cells by applying a controlled voltage signal to a previously floating bitline of a neighbor cell to reduce a potential difference between the source and drain nodes of the untargeted neighbor memory cell during a write operation at a target memory cell. In another embodiment, an increased source bias voltage is applied on a “source” bitline of the target cell during the ramping of the drain bias voltage and then reduced to a ground or near ground potential during the write operation.”

The patent application was filed on July 31, 2012 (13/563,206).