Glossary

Word line

Beginner

The wire that ‘opens the door’ to every memory cell in one row at once.

Novice

A horizontal wire running across one row of a memory array. Raising it turns on the access transistors of every cell in that row, connecting them to their bit lines.

Expert

Driven by the row decoder through a large buffer; its RC delay and the number of cells it loads set part of the access time. Its voltage can be lowered on reads (underdrive) to protect stability or raised on writes (boost) to help writability.

Explained in Memory cells (Transistors).

See also: Bit line, Bitcell.

All 896 terms →