Process variation aware SRAM/cache for aggressive voltage-frequency scaling

Authors:
Avesta Sasan (Mohammad A Makhzan);Houman Homayoun;Ahmed Eltawil;Fadi Kurdahi
Affiliations:
University of California Irvine;University of California Irvine;University of California Irvine;University of California Irvine
Venue:
Proceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe
Year:
2009

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Abstract

this paper proposes a novel Process Variation Aware SRAM architecture designed to inherently support voltage scaling. The peripheral circuitry of the SRAM is modified to selectively allow overdriving a wordline which contains weak cell(s). This architecture allows reducing the power on the entire array; however it selectively trades power for correctness when rows containing weak cells are accessed. The cell sizing is designed to assure successful read operations. This avoids flipping the content of the cells when the wordline is overdriven. Our simulations report 23% to 30% improvement in cell access time and 31% to 51% improvement in cell write time in overdriven wordlines. Total area overhead is negligible (4%). Low voltage operation achieves more than 40% reduction in dynamic power consumption and approximately 50% reduction in leakage power consumption.