Patent ID: 8270196
Filing Date: 2012-09-18
Classification: G06F,G11C,Y02D

Abstract:
1. An integrated circuit (IC) including embedded non-FLASH non-volatile memory, comprising: a semiconductor substrate including circuitry fabricated on a logic plane of the semiconductor substrate, the circuitry including a vertically configured memory plane in contact with and fabricated directly above the semiconductor substrate, the vertically configured memory plane is positioned over the logic plane; a non-volatile memory array embedded in the vertically configured memory plane and electrically coupled with the control unit, the non-volatile memory array configured for data storage use by the control unit, the non-volatile memory array including a plurality memory elements, each memory element (ME) having exactly two terminals comprised of a first terminal and a second terminal, each ME is operative to store at least one bit of data as a plurality of conductivity profiles that can be determined by applying a read voltage across the first and second terminals, the data is retained in the absence of electrical power, data is reversibly written by applying a write voltage across the first and second terminals, and a magnitude of the read voltage is less than a magnitude of the write voltage, wherein the FLASH emulation interface circuitry is operative to perform data operations on the non-volatile memory array in response to the plurality of signals and the data operations emulate FLASH memory data operations, and wherein the FLASH emulation interface circuitry is configured to perform a write operation to the non-volatile memory array without having to perform a FLASH erase operation prior to the write operation.