NOVEL FLASH MEMORY ARRAY AND DECODING ARCHITECTURE

A flash memory circuit having a word line decoder with even and odd word line latches and a source line decoder with a source line latch is disclosed. The word line decoders and source line decoder provide the capability of erasing the memory cells of two adjacent word lines in a flash memory simultaneously and verifying the memory cells word line by word line. By erasing two adjacent rows simultaneously, the embodiments of this invention eliminates over-erasure and source disturbance problems associated with conventional flash memory circuits. The decoding architecture provides flexible erase size that can be from a pair to a large number of multiple pairs of word lines. By dividing the memory cells of a word line into a number of segments, the decoding circuit further provides the capability of selecting the memory cells of a word line segment for erasing.