A 0.9 V sense-amplifier driver for high-speed Gb-scale DRAMs

We proposed a new sense-amplifier driver for low power, high-speed Gb-scale DRAMs. Our sense amplifier is temporally isolated from the bit line and we use overdriving with boost capacitors, to operate at a Vcc of down to 0.8 V. A charge recycle technique using a new charge-transfer transistor driver is employed to reduce power consumption in the additional controlling circuits. SPICE simulation showed that the access time was 2.7 ns faster than the conventional method, and the power consumption to isolate the bit lines and overdrive the sense amplifier was reduced by 28% using the charge recycle technique.