Patent ID: 8189378

Claim:
A method performed during programming of non-volatile storage, comprising: boosting a group of connected non-volatile storage elements, the group of connected non-volatile storage elements includes a particular non-volatile storage element, the boosting includes: applying a first boosting signal to one or more non-volatile storage elements of the group that have started but not completed full programming since a last erase process for the group, the one or more non-volatile storage elements include a first neighbor non-volatile storage element, the first neighbor non-volatile storage element is next to and on a first side of the particular non-volatile storage element, and applying a second boosting signal to a plurality of other non-volatile storage elements of the group that have or not started programming since the last erase process for the group, the first boosting signal is greater in voltage than the second boosting signal by at least a voltage offset based on the difference between an erased state and an intermediate programmed state of the first neighbor non-volatile storage element; and applying a program signal to the particular non-volatile storage element while the group is boosted such that the particular non-volatile storage element is not programmed in response to the program signal.