• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.49 no.8
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• pp.10-15
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• 2012

This letter proposes a low-leakage SRAM using power-gating and voltage-level control. The power-gating scheme significantly reduces leakage power by shutting off the power supply to blank memory cell blocks. The voltage-level control scheme saves leakage power by raising the ground line voltage of SRAM cells and word line decoders in data-stored memory cell blocks. A $4K{\times}8bit$ SRAM chip was fabricated using a 1.2V $0.13{\mu}m$ CMOS process. The leakage powers are $1.23{\sim}9.87{\mu}W$ and $1.23{\sim}3.01{\mu}W$ for 0~100% memory usage in active and sleep modes, respectively. During the sleep mode, the proposed SRAM consumes 12.5~30.5% leakage power compared to the conventional SRAM.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.265-273
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• 2012

Data stability and leakage power dissipation have become a critical issue in scaled SRAM design. In this paper, an advanced 8T SRAM cell improving the read and write stability of data storage elements as well as reducing the leakage current in the idle mode is presented. During the read operation, the bit-cell keeps the noise-vulnerable data 'low' node voltage close to the ground level, and thus producing near-ideal voltage transfer characteristics essential for robust read functionality. In the write operation, a negative bias on the cell facilitates to change the contents of the bit. Unlike the conventional 6T cell, there is no conflicting read and write requirement on sizing the transistors. In the standby mode, the built-in stacked device in the 8T cell reduces the leakage current significantly. The 8T SRAM cell implemented in a 130 nm CMOS technology demonstrates almost 100 % higher read stability while bearing 20 % better write-ability at 1.2 V typical condition, and a reduction by 45 % in leakage power consumption compared to the standard 6T cell. The stability enhancement and leakage power reduction provided with the proposed bit-cell are confirmed under process, voltage and temperature variations.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.43 no.3 s.345
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• pp.21-32
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• 2006

A new SRAM circuit with row-by-row activation and low-swing write schemes is proposed to reduce switching power of active cells as well as leakage one of sleep cells in this paper. By driving source line of sleep cells by $V_{SSH}$ which is higher than $V_{SS}$, the leakage current can be reduced to 1/100 due to the cooperation of the reverse body-bias. Drain Induced Barrier Lowering (DIBL), and negative $V_{GS}$ effects. Moreover, the bit line leakage which may introduce a fault during the read operation can be eliminated in this new SRAM. Swing voltage on highly capacitive bit lines is reduced to $V_{DD}-to-V_{SSH}$ from the conventional $V_{DD}-to-V_{SS}$ during the write operation, greatly saving the bit line switching power. Combining the row-by-row activation scheme with the low-swing write does not require the additional area penalty. By the SPICE simulation with the Berkeley Predictive Technology Modes, 93% of leakage power and 43% of switching one are estimated to be saved in future leakage-dominant 70-un process. A test chip has been fabricated using $0.35-{\mu}m$ CMOS process to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the new SRAM, where the switching power is measured to be 30% less than the conventional SRAM when the I/O bit width is only 8. The stored data is confirmed to be retained without loss until the retention voltage is reduced to 1.1V which is mainly due to the metal shield. The switching power will be expected to be more significant with increasing the I/O bit width.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.125-131
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• 2018

STT-RAM is attracting as a next generation Non-volatile memory for replacing cache memory with low leakage energy, high integration and memory access performance similar to SRAM. However, there is problem of write operations as the other Non_volatile memory. Hybrid cache memory using SRAM and STT-RAM is attracting attention as a cache memory structure with lowe power consumption. Despite this, reducing the leakage energy consumption by the STT-RAM is still lacking access to the Dynamic energy. In this paper, we proposed as energy management method such as a way-selection approach for hybrid L2 cache fo SRAM and STT-RAM and memory selection method of write/read operation. According to the simulation results, the proposed hybrid cache memory reduced the average energy consumption by 40% on SPEC CPU 2006, compared with SRAM cache memory.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.226-239
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• 2013

A number of systems have several on-chip memories with cache memory being one of them. Conventional cache memory consists of SRAM but the ratio of static energy to the total energy of the memory architecture becomes larger as the leakage power of traditional SRAM increases. Spin-Torque Transfer RAM (STT-RAM), which is a variety of Non-Volatile Memory (NVM), has many advantages over SRAM, such as high density, low leakage power, and non-volatility, but it consumes too much writing energy. This study evaluated a wide range of energy consumptions of a two-level cache using NVM partially on a mobile processor. Through a number of experimental evaluations, it was confirmed that the use of NVM partially in the two-level cache effectively reduces energy consumption significantly.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.25-31
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• 2009

A low power SRAM using supply voltage charge recycling (SVCR-SRAM) scheme is proposed. It divides into two SRAM cell blocks and supplies two different powers. A supplied power is $V_{DD}$ and $V_{DD}/2$. The other is $V_{DD}/2$ and GND. When N-bit cells are accessed, the charge used in N/2-bit cells with VDD and $V_{DD}/2$ is recycled in the other N/2-bit cells with $V_{DD}/2$ and GND. The SVCR scheme is used in the power consuming parts which bit line, data bus, word line, and SRAM cells to reduce dynamic power. The other parts of SRAM use $V_{DD}$ and GND to achieve high speed. Also, the SVCR-SRAM results in reducing leakage power of SRAM cells due to the body-effect. A 64K-bit SRAM ($8K{\times}8$bits) is implemented in a $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process. It saves 57.4% write power and 27.6% read power at $V_{DD}=1.8V$ and f=50MHz.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.6-11
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• 2018

As embedded memory technology evolves, the traditional Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) technology has reached the end of development. For deepening the manufacturing process technology, the next generation memory technology is highly required because of the exponentially increasing leakage current of SRAM. Non-volatile memories such as STT-MRAM (Spin Torque Transfer Magnetic Random Access Memory), PCM (Phase Change Memory) are good candidates for replacing SRAM technology in embedded memory systems. They have many advanced characteristics in the perspective of power consumption, leakage power, size (density) and latency. Nonetheless, nonvolatile memories have two major problems that hinder their use it the next-generation memory. First, the lifetime of the nonvolatile memory cell is limited by the number of write operations. Next, the write operation consumes more latency and power than the same size of the read operation.These disadvantages can be solved using the compiler. The disadvantage of non-volatile memory is in write operations. Therefore, when the compiler decides the layout of the data, it is solved by optimizing the write operation to allocate a lot of data to the SRAM. This study provides insights into how these compiler and architectural designs can be developed.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.67-78
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• 2016

The emerging Spin-Transfer Torque RAM (STT-RAM) is a promising component that can be used to improve the efficiency as a result of its high storage density and low leakage power. However, the state-of-the-art STT-RAM is not ready to replace SRAM technology due to the negative effect of its write operations. The write operations require longer latency and more power than the same operations in SRAM. Therefore, a hybrid cache with SRAM and STT-RAM technologies is proposed to obtain the benefits of STT-RAM while minimizing its negative effects by using SRAM. To efficiently use of the hybrid cache, it is important to place write intensive data onto the cache. Such data should be placed on SRAM to minimize the negative effect. Thus, we propose a technique that optimizes placement of data in main memory. It drives the proper combination of advantages and disadvantages for SRAM and STT-RAM in the hybrid cache. As a result of the proposed technique, write intensive data are loaded to SRAM and read intensive data are loaded to STT-RAM. In addition, our technique also optimizes temporal locality to minimize conflict misses. Therefore, it improves performance and energy consumption of the hybrid cache architecture in a certain range.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.7-17
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• 2010

In this paper, an innovative low-power SRAM based on 4-transistor latch cell is described. The memory cells are composed of two cross-coupled inverters without access transistors. The sources of PMOS transistors are connected to bitlines while the sources of NMOS transistors are connected to wordlines. They are accessed by totally new read and write method which results in low operating power dissipation in the nature. Moreover, the design reduces the leakage current in the memory cells. The proposed SRAM has been demonstrated through 16-kbit test chip fabricated in a 0.18-${\mu}m$ CMOS process. It shows 17.5 ns access at 1.8-V supply while consuming dynamic power of $87.6\;{\mu}W/MHz$ (for read cycle) and $70.2\;{\mu}W/MHz$ (for write cycle). Compared with those of the conventional 6-transistor SRAM, it exhibits the power reduction of 30 % (read) and 42 % (write) respectively. Silicon measurement also confirms that the proposed SRAM achieves nearly 64 % reduction in the total standby power dissipation. This novel SRAM might be effective in realizing low-power embedded memory in future mobile applications.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.391-397
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• 2015

Nonvolatile memories in memory hierarchy have been investigated to reduce its energy consumption because nonvolatile memories consume zero leakage power in memory cells. One of the difficulties is, however, that the endurance of most nonvolatile memory technologies is much shorter than the conventional SRAM and DRAM technology. This has limited its usage to only the low levels of a memory hierarchy, e.g., disks, that is far from the CPU. In this paper, we study the use of a new type of nonvolatile memories - the Phase Change Memory (PCM) with a DRAM buffer system as the main memory. Our design reduced the total energy of a DRAM main memory of the same capacity by 80%. These results indicate that it is feasible to use PCM technology in place of DRAM in the main memory for better energy efficiency.