A submicron 1 Mbit dynamic RAM with a 4-bit-at-a-time built-in ECC circuit

A submicron CMOS 1-Mb RAM with a built-in error checking and correcting (ECC) circuit is described. An advanced bidirectional parity code with a self-checking function is proposed to reduce the soft error rate. A distributed sense circuit makes it possible to implement a small memory cell size of 20 /spl mu/m/SUP 2/ in combination with a trench capacitor technique. The 1M word/spl times/1 bit device was fabricated on a 6.4/spl times/8.2 mm chip. The additional 98-kb parity cells and the built-in ECC circuit occupy about 12% of the whole chip area. The measured access time is 140 ns, including 20 ns ECC operation.