Title :
Low voltage SRAMs and the scalability of the 9T Supply Feedback SRAM
Author :
Mezhibovsky, Janna ; Teman, Adam ; Fish, Alexander
Author_Institution :
Low Power Circuits & Syst. Lab. (LPC&S), Ben-Gurion Univ. of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
Abstract :
Recent research has shown that minimum energy operation of digital circuits is in the sub-threshold region, and a good trade-off between power and performance can be achieved through operation at near threshold supply voltages. However, due to process variations and device mismatch at nanoscale technology nodes, voltage scaling of standard SRAMs is limited to strong-inversion operation. One of the techniques for enabling operation at low voltages is implementation of a Supply Feedback mechanism that internally weakens the pull-up current during write operations. This concept was recently implemented in a 9T Supply Feedback SRAM (SF-SRAM) cell, fabricated and successfully tested in a 40nm CMOS technology. In this paper, we review existing low voltage SRAM solutions, overview the SF-SRAM cell, and show its scalability into deep nanoscale technologies by using the 22nm predictive model.
Keywords :
CMOS logic circuits; SRAM chips; integrated circuit design; low-power electronics; nanotechnology; 9T supply feedback SRAM scalability; CMOS technology; device mismatch; digital circuits; low voltage SRAM; minimum energy operation; nanoscale technology; process variation; size 22 nm; size 40 nm; strong inversion operation; subthreshold region; supply feedback mechanism; Low voltage; Nanoscale devices; Predictive models; Random access memory; Scalability; Semiconductor device modeling; Transistors;
Conference_Titel :
SOC Conference (SOCC), 2011 IEEE International
Conference_Location :
Taipei
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-1616-4
Electronic_ISBN :
2164-1676
DOI :
10.1109/SOCC.2011.6085135
