A 0.8-V 128-kb four-way set-associative two-level CMOS cache memory using two-stage wordline/bitline-oriented tag-compare (WLOTC/BLOTC) scheme

This paper reports a 0.8-V 128-kb four-way set-associative two-level CMOS cache memory using a novel two-stage wordline/bitline-oriented tag-compare (WLOTC/BLOTC) and sense wordline/bitline (SWL/SBL) tag-sense amplifiers with an eight-transistor (8-T) tag cell in Level 2 (L2) and a 10-T shrunk logic swing (SLS) memory cell. with the ground/floating (G/F) data sense amplifier in Level 1 (L1) for high-speed operation for low-voltage low-power VLSI system applications. Owing to the reduced loading at the SWL in the new 11-T tag cell using the WLOTC scheme, the 10-T SLS memory cell with G/F sense amplifier in L1, and the split comparison of the index signal in the 8-T tag cells with SWL/SBL tag sense amplifiers in L2, this 0.8-V cache memory implemented in a 1.8-V 0.18-μm CMOS technology has a measured L1/L2 hit time of 11.6/20.5 ns at the average dissipation of 0.77 mW at 50 MHz.