A digital multilevel non-volatile memory includes a massive sensing system
that includes a plurality of sense amplifiers disposed adjacent subarrays
of memory cells. The sense amplifier includes a high speed load, a wide
output range intermediate stage and a low impedance output driver. The
high speed load provides high speed sensing. The wide output range
provides a sensing margin at high speed on the comparison node. The low
impedance output driver drives a heavy noisy load of a differential
comparator. A precharge circuit coupled to the input and output of the
sense amplifier increases the speed of sensing. A differential comparator
has an architecture that includes analog bootstrap. A reference sense
amplifier has the same architecture as the differential amplifier to
reduce errors in offset. The reference differential amplifier also
includes a signal multiplexing for detecting the contents of redundant
cells and reference cells.