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  4. Standard-Cell Based Memories (SCMs): from Sub-VT to Error-Resilient Systems
 
conference poster not in proceedings

Standard-Cell Based Memories (SCMs): from Sub-VT to Error-Resilient Systems

Meinerzhagen, Pascal Andreas  
•
Rodrigues, Joachim Neves
•
Burg, Andreas Peter  
2012
IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Student Research Preview (SRP) session

Embedded memories consume an increasingly dominant part of the overall area and power of a large variety of systems-on-chip [ITRS’09]: 1) biomedical implants and wireless sensor networks require robust memories operating in the sub-VT domain; 2) many handheld devices and microprocessors are operated near to threshold-voltage; and 3) fault-tolerant systems/error-resilient computing has attracted interest due to increaing process variations. Standard-cell based memories (SCMs) entail minimum design effort and are immediately functional in any system from reliable sub-VT to error-resilient high-performance. In particular, sub-VT SCMs ensure robustness and improve access bandwidth and energy-efficiency compared to sub-VT SRAM macros. Adding only one custom cell (low-leakage latch) to a commercial standard-cell library further improves energy-efficiency of sub-VT SCMs. In fault-tolerant systems requiring small data retention times, a small amount of errors in the memory content does not severely impede system functionality, and dynamic latches yield SCMs smaller than commercial 6T SRAM macros for storage capacities up to at least 2kb. Various silicon-prooven SCM architectures are presented, and the best-practice SCM implementations for both sub-VT and above-VT applications are derived. To reduce leakage power in sub-VT SCMs, a latch with few highly resistive VDD-ground path is designed using transistor stacking and stretching. For the benefit of smaller silicon area, but at the cost of reduced robustness, various dynamic latches are integrated in the SCM compilation flow.

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Type
conference poster not in proceedings
Author(s)
Meinerzhagen, Pascal Andreas  
Rodrigues, Joachim Neves
Burg, Andreas Peter  
Date Issued

2012

Subjects

Sub-threshold & near threshold memory design

•

High-density memories for fault-tolerant systems

•

Standard-cell based memories

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
TCL  
Event nameEvent placeEvent date
IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Student Research Preview (SRP) session

San Francisco, California, USA

February 17-21, 2012

Available on Infoscience
June 13, 2012
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/81814
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