Testing Disturbance Faults in Various NAND Flash Memories

Abstract

NAND flash memory is the most popular nonvolatile memory. Due to the specific mechanism of functional operations, flash memories are prone to disturbance faults. Furthermore, different NAND flash memories might have some differences on the array organizations and the supported functional operations. For example, some NAND flash memories can support the random program operation, but some cannot; some NAND flash memories with single-page wordlines and some with multiple-page wordlines. The differences on the array organizations and the functional operations result in the heavy influence on the testing of disturbance faults. In this paper, therefore, we analyze the disturbance faults for NAND flash memories with different array organizations and functional operations. Also, test algorithms for covering the disturbance faults in various types of NAND flash memories are developed.