Reimagining Sense Amplifiers: Harnessing Phase Transition Materials for Current and Voltage Sensing

Abstract

Energy-efficient sense amplifier (SA) circuits are essential for reliable detection of stored memory states in emerging memory systems. In this work, we introduce three novel sense amplifier topologies based on phase transition materials (PTM) in addition to the previously proposed one, collectively analyzing all four designs tailored for non-volatile memory applications. We utilize the abrupt switching and volatile hysteretic characteristics of PTMs which enables efficient and fast sensing operation in our proposed SA topologies. We provide comprehensive details of their functionality and assess how process variations impact their performance metrics. Our proposed sense amplifier topologies manifest notable performance enhancement. We achieve a ∼67% reduction in sensing delay and a ∼80% decrease in sensing power for current sensing. For voltage sensing, we achieve a ∼75% reduction in sensing delay and a ∼33% decrease in sensing power. Moreover, the proposed SA topologies exhibit improved variation robustness compared to conventional SAs. We also scrutinize the dependence of transistor mirroring window and PTM transition voltages on several device parameters to determine the optimum operating conditions and stance of tunability for each of the proposed SA topologies.