Abstract: A flash EPROM cell has a reduced cell size by providing vertical coupling between the floating gate and the bit line during programming. The erase operation is done by tunneling of electrons from the sharp tip of the Poly spacer to the control gate. The cell is adapted so that the source for each cell within the array is the source of an adjacent cell and the drain is the drain to another adjacent cell. The cell is formed by forming the drain regions into the substrate through openings in a first insulator that is preferably the field oxide. A second insulator is deposited over the first insulator, over the substrate and along the side walls of the openings and is preferably a thin layer so that the opening is covered with a thin insulating layer. The insulated opening is filled with a metal, preferably tungsten or a tungsten alloy. The field oxide is selectively removed.

Abstract: A header detect method and apparatus for an optical media decoder circuit includes one or more comparators which compare target header information to header information read from the optical media for a current sector and each subsequent sector until the header information read from the optical media matches the target header information. The target header information is programmed into one or more target header registers. The information stored in the target header registers is then compared to the header information read from the optical media. Multiple comparators are used, to compare the header information read from the optical media for the current sector and a number of previous sectors to the target header information programmed into each of the target header registers, in order to provide a redundancy within the system and allow the apparatus to locate the target header even if one or more of the registers contain errors.