Abstract: Electronic memory circuits, and more particularly, low power electronic memory circuits having low manufacturing costs are disclosed. The present invention is a circuit design that utilizes two transistor types—bipolar and MOS (but, not both NMOS and PMOS) one of which can be manufactured together with the memory cell's non-linear conductive elements (such as a diode) thereby reducing the number of processing steps and masks and resulting in lower cost.

Abstract: The present invention is a method for accessing more than one block of correctable information at a time when it is most efficient to access more bits of information at a time on a given dimension, for example from a multiple bit per cell (MLC) memory element, than the error correction algorithm can correct. Since it may be more efficient to access more bits of information at a time on a given dimension than the error correction algorithm can correct, that access is performed in this most efficient way, but the information is divided into correctable blocks within this information such that the error correction algorithm can still compensate for a serious fault along a given dimension. Furthermore, the present invention can be employed even when the number of bits retrieved along a given dimension is less than the number of correctable bits when it is desired to protect against a given number of faults which could, in total, exceed the number of correctable bits.