Characteristics and Programming of Floating-Gate pFET Switches in an FPAA Crossbar Network

Abstract

A floating-gate pFET is a desirable switch element for use in a crossbar switch due to it having a resistance on the order of a transmission gate, the capacitance of a single pass-FET, and requires no digital memory to store the state of the switch. As a result, a floating-gate pFET crossbar network can achieve a higher bandwidth than a transmission gate based network. In addition, the resulting floating-gate implementation has a smaller silicon footprint than an array of transmission gates with the necessary support structures. Finally, the resistance of the floating-gate switch is achieved by modulating the input gate voltage during channel hot-electron injection.