Method and apparatus for improving yield in semiconductor devices by guaranteeing health of redundancy information

摘要

A method is provided comprising reading a set of memory cells indicating whether stored redundancy information is reliable and, if the set of memory cells indicates that the stored redundancy information is reliable, determining whether to read primary memory or redundant memory based on the stored redundancy information. Another method is provided comprising reading a set of memory cells associated with a group of memory cells in a primary memory, the set of memory cells indicating whether data can be reliably stored in the group of memory cells; if the set of memory cells indicates that data can be reliably stored in the group of memory cells, storing data in the group of memory cells; and if the set of memory cells does not indicate that data can be reliably stored in the group of memory cells, storing data in a group of memory cells in a redundant memory. In another preferred embodiment, a method for providing memory redundancy is provided.