Patent ID: 7257020

Claim:
A thin film magnetic memory device permitting parallel input/output of data of m bits (m is an integer not less than 2), comprising: a plurality of blocks each including a plurality of memory cells arranged in rows and columns and a plurality of dummy memory cells arranged to form dummy memory cell rows by sharing said columns with said plurality of memory cells, each said memory cell having an electric resistance in accordance with magnetically written data and each said dummy memory cell having a prescribed electric resistance, each said block further including (m+1) memory cell columns formed of said plurality of memory cells and said plurality of dummy memory cells, and (m+1) data line pairs each formed of complementary first and second data lines, provided corresponding to said (m+1) memory cell columns, each said first and second data lines being connected to one and the other of the memory cell and the dummy memory cell belonging to corresponding one of said (m+1) memory cell columns at the time of data read from corresponding one of said plurality of blocks, the thin film magnetic memory device further comprising: m data terminals for sending/receiving said data to/from an outside; and a shift redundancy circuit, when there is a defect in at least one of said memory cells and said dummy memory cells in a selected block, for reading and writing said data sent/received by said m data terminals using m said data line pairs other than the data line pair connected to said defect in said selected block.