METHOD AND CIRCUIT FOR DRIVING WORD LINE IN SEMICONDUCTOR MEMORY DEVICE

摘要

PURPOSE: A method and a circuit for driving a word line in a semiconductor memory device are provided, which performs a word line boosting simply without lowering the whole speed of a memory operation by improving a boosting operation, and removes a prior ring oscillator to recover a lowered boosting level, and maintains a boosting level of the word line stably without adopting the ring oscillator, and also reduces the load of a layout and power consumption. CONSTITUTION: The word line driving circuit includes an ATD(Address Transfer Detect) pulse generation part(10), a pulse control part(12), a predecoder(4), a booster(14) and a main decoder(6). The ATD pulse generation part generates an ATD pulse signal by sensing a transition of an address signal being output through an address buffer. The pulse control part generates a pulse word line enable signal(PWL) related to a word line driving in response to a rising edge of the ATD pulse signal, and generates a boosting enable signal(Pboost) in response to a falling edge of the ATD pulse signal. The predecoder generates a signal by predecoding the applied address signal in response to the pulse word line enable signal. The booster generates a boosted voltage(Boosted PWR) having a higher level than a power supply voltage in response to the boosting enable signal. And the main decoder receives the boosted voltage as a driving power supply voltage and makes the word line selected by decoding the predecoding signal to be boosted as a higher level than the power supply voltage.