Introduction to VLSI Systems
IEEE Micro
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Born at around the same time as the microprocessor, the DRAM has played an important role as a major semiconductor memory component of computer systems. In reviewing trends in the architecture of semiconductor memories, the present paper focuses particularly on DRAMs. It describes the architecture of the memory cell and the array, as well as the operation scheme, which brought the DRAM its present success but at the same time imposed limitations. Efforts to overcome the greatest limitation of the DRAMs' performance by increasing their speed and functionality are discussed in detail. We extrapolate the historical trend of DRAM development into the future and present arguments on high-speed DRAM and merged DRAM/logic issues.