Non-volatile semiconductor memory e.g. phase-change RAM for portable electronic device, has biasing circuit driven by boosting circuit for applying bias to sense node and sense amplifier for detecting voltage of sense node

摘要

The non-volatile semiconductor memory has a phase-change memory cell (111) selectively connected to a sense node. The biasing circuit (175) comprising a metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) transistor is driven by the boosting voltage from a boosting circuit (200) for applying bias to sense node and the voltage of the sense node is detected by a sense amplifier (170). Independent claims are included for the following: (1) non-volatile semiconductor memory device; (2) method of reading phase-change memory cell; and (3) system of reading phase-change memory cell.