A snake addressing scheme for phase change memory testing

Phase change memory (PCM) is one of the most promising candidates for next generation nonvolatile memory. However, PCM suffers from a variety of faults due to its special device structure and operation mechanism. A snake addressing scheme is introduced into the test algorithms of PCM to reduce the test time and excite proximity disturb faults more effectively. The March test algorithm with the proposed snake addressing scheme is less complex than most traditional test algorithms. In addition to conventional faults, it is capable of covering disturb and parasitic faults. Moreover, when incorporated with the sneak path testing method, it is able to test the read fault, read recovery fault, incomplete program fault 0, and false write fault.