Patent 7706208 was granted and assigned to Hitachi on April, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
If memory cell blocks are laid out in a conventional manner to create a memory chip with a capacity of an odd power of 2 by using memory cells whose aspect ratio is 1:2, the chip will take a 1:1 shape and become difficult to enclose in a package of a 1:2 shape. In addition, such conventional layout of memory cell blocks to form the 1:2 shape causes the area of a peripheral circuit region to be limited by the memory blocks, pads to be arranged collectively in the central section of the chip, and wiring to become dense during the enclosure of the chip in the package.