A 11.5pW/bit 400mV 5T gain-cell eDRAM for ULP applications in 28nm FD-SOI

Abstract

The silicon area of ultra-low power (ULP) applications is often dominated by embedded memories, which are the main consumers of both the static and dynamic power in these applications [1]. Supply voltage scaling down to the sub-threshold region is widely used to significantly reduce both the static and dynamic power dissipation of ULP applications [2]. However, embedded memories, typically implemented with SRAM, have been the limiting factor for aggressive voltage scaling, since the conventional 6-transistor (6T) SRAM bitcell becomes unreliable at near-threshold operating voltages [3-6].