A novel reconfigurable sensing scheme for variable level storage in phase change memory

Abstract

This paper presents a novel reconfigurable sensing scheme with the flexibility to change reading precision of analog resistance levels for MLC PCM. A 2Mcell PCM chip was fabricated in 90nm CMOS technology and was tested. Operating at 8-bits precision (adequate for 7b/cell PCM i.e., 128 resistance levels), read access latency is 5μs (measured at 50MHz clock), compared to 35-50μs in state-of-art 2b/cell NAND Flash. © 2011 IEEE.