Asymmetric soft-error resistant memory

摘要

A memory system is provided, of the type which includes an error-correcting circuit that detects and corrects errors, which more efficiently utilizes the capacity of a memory formed of groups of binary cells whose states can be inadvertently switched by ionizing radiation. Each memory cell has an asymmetric geometry, so that ionizing radiation causes a significantly greater probability of errors in one state than in the opposite state (e.g., an erroneous switch from "1" to "0" is far more likely than a switch from "0" to "1"). An asymmetric error-correcting coding circuit can be used with the asymmetric memory cells, which requires fewer bits than an efficient symmetric error-correcting code.