A high-density 45 nm SRAM using small-signal non-strobed regenerative sensing

Naveen Verma, Anantha P. Chandrakasan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

High-density SRAMs utilize aggressively small bit-cells, which are subject to extreme variability, degrading their read SNM and read-current. Additionally, array performance is also limited by sense-amplifier offset and strobe-timing uncertainty. This paper, presents a sense-amplifier that targets all of these performance degradations: specifically, simple offset compensation reduces sensitivity to variation while imposing minimal loading on high-speed nodes; stable internal voltage references serve as an internal means to self-trigger regeneration to avoid tracking mismatch in an external strobe-path; precise small-signal detection withstands small read-currents so that other bit-cell parameters can be optimized; and single-ended sensing provides compatibility to asymmetric bit-cells, which can have improved operating margins. The design is integrated with a 64-kb high-density array composed of 0.25 $μ{m}}{2} $ 6T bit-cells. A prototype, in low-power 45 nm CMOS, compares its performance with a conventional sense-amplifier, demonstrating an improvement of 4X in access-time sigma and 34% in overall worst case access time.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number4735563
Pages (from-to)163-173
Number of pages11
JournalIEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits
Volume44
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2009
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Keywords

  • Auto-zeroing
  • Device variation
  • Offset compensation
  • SRAM
  • Sense-amplifier

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