Dataline Isolated Differential Current Feed/Mode Sense Amplifier for Small Icell SRAM Using FinFET

Abstract

This paper for the first time presents a novel, high-performance and robust current feed sense amplifiers (CF-SA) design for small ICell SRAM in 20nm Fin-shaped field effect transistor (FinFET) technology. The CFSA incorporates isolated DL current sensing approach which provides the higher Current Ratio Amplification (CRA) factor. The CF-SA significantly outperforms with 66.89% and 31.47% lower sensing delay than CCSA [13] and HSA [8] respectively under similar ICell and bit-line and data-line capacitance. Our results show that even at the worst corner the CF-SA demonstrates 2.15x and 3.02x higher differential current and 2.23x and 1.7x higher data-line differential voltage with 66.6% and 34.32% higher mean (μ) than those of the best prior arts. Furthermore, failure probability of the proposed design against process parameter variations is rigorously analyzed through Monte Carlo simulations.