Redesigning Commercial Floating-Gate Memory for Analog Computing Applications

Abstract: We have modified a commercial NOR flash memory array to enable high-precision tuning of individual floating-gate cells for analog computing applications. The modified array area per cell in a 180 nm process is about 1.5 um^2. While this area is approximately twice the original cell size, it is still at least an order of magnitude smaller than in the state-of-the-art analog circuit implementations. The new memory cell arrays have been successfully tested, in particular confirming that each cell may be automatically tuned, with ~1% precision, to any desired subthreshold readout current value within an almost three-orders-of-magnitude dynamic range, even using an unoptimized tuning algorithm. Preliminary results for a four-quadrant vector-by-matrix multiplier, implemented with the modified memory array gate-coupled with additional peripheral floating-gate transistors, show highly linear transfer characteristics over a broad range of input currents.