Performance and reliability measures of floating gate analog memory cells

Several floating gate analog memories have been proposed for use in integrated analog systems such as neural network implementations. This work proposes a set of three figures of merit that describe the performance and reliability of these memory cells. Programming time, storage lifetime, and failure voltage are a set of empirically determined parameters that quantify the essential features of a generic analog memory cell without requiring detailed knowledge of the underlying semiconductor process. They can be used to compare different memory cell designs, and to predict the performance of analog systems.