Title : 
Differential-read 8T SRAM cell with tunable access and pull-down transistors
         
        
            Author : 
Liang Wen ; Zhentao Li ; Yong Li
         
        
            Author_Institution : 
Inst. of Microelectron., Nat. Univ. of Defense Technol., Changsha, China
         
        
        
        
        
        
        
            Abstract : 
A novel 8T SRAM cell with high stability and write speed is proposed. The tunable access transistors and pull-down transistors are used to favour the desired operations. During a write operation, the strength of access transistors is enhanced, resulting in improving noise-immunity and write speed. The strength of pull-down transistors is enhanced during the read operation, hence exhibiting a high noise tolerance. The experimental results show that the proposed 8T cell can provide approximately 1.28× improvement in read static noise margin (SNM) and 1.10× improvement in write SNM compared to the standard 6T cell at 0.9V in 65nm process. Moreover, it also achieves 1.52× faster write speed and higher process variation tolerance.
         
        
            Keywords : 
SRAM chips; transistors; SNM; differential-read 8T SRAM cell; noise-immunity; pull-down transistor strength; size 65 nm; static noise margin; tunable access transistors; voltage 0.9 V; write speed;
         
        
        
            Journal_Title : 
Electronics Letters
         
        
        
        
        
            DOI : 
10.1049/el.2012.2612