Sharif Digital Repository

Bias temperature instability (BTI) is one of the major CMOS reliability issues in nanoscales. The main impact of BTI on SRAM memory cells is the degradation of the static noise margin (SNM), which leads to a higher susceptibility to failures. A variety of techniques for mitigating the impact of BTI on caches have been proposed at architecture level. However, their considerable overheads limit the application of such techniques. Recent studies showed that the utilization of the cache capacity widely varies from one workload to another and even within a workload. When cache utilization is low, for the majority of the cells, the same value is stored for a very long period, which significantly... 

Based on the observation that dynamic occurrence of zeros in the cache access stream and cache-resident memory values of ordinary programs exhibit a strong bias towards zero, this paper presents a novel CMOS five-transistor SRAM cell (5T SRAM cell) for very high density and low power cache applications. This cell retains its data with leakage current and positive feedback without refresh cycle. Novel 5T SRAM cell uses one word-line and one bit-line and extra read-line control. The new cell size is 17% smaller than a conventional six-transistor SRAM cell using same design rules with no performance degradation. Simulation and analytical results show purposed cell has correct operation during... 

As transistor dimensions are reduced due to technological advances, the area constraint is becoming less restrictive, but soft error rate, leakage current, and process variation are drastically increased. Therefore, in nano-scaled CMOS technology, soft error rate, leakage current and process variation are the most important issues in designing embedded cache memory. To overcome these challenges, and based on the observation that cache-resident memory values of ordinary programs exhibit a strong bias towards zero, this paper deals with new low leakage, hardened, and read-static-noise-margin-free SRAM memory cells for nano-scaled CMOS technology. These cells are completely hardened and cannot... 

The leakage current and process variation are drastically increased with technology scaling. In Conventional SRAM cell due to process variations, stored data can be destroyed during read operation. Therefore, leakage current of SRAM cell and stability during read operation are two important parameters in nano-scaled CMOS technology. To overcome these limitations and to increase the speed of conventional SRAMs, we have developed a read-static-noise-margin-free SRAM cell. The developed cell has six-transistors and uses two read/write-lines and two read/write-bit-lines during read/write operation. This cell retains its data with leakage current and positive feedback without refresh cycle. The... 

The fast growth of battery-operated portable applications has compelled the static random access memory (SRAM) designers to consider sub-threshold operation as a viable choice to reduce the power consumption. To increase the hold, read and write static noise margin (SNM) in the sub-threshold regime many structures has been proposed adding extra transistors to the conventional 6T-cell. In this paper we propose a new 8T-cell SRAM that shows 90% improvement in read SNM while write and hold SNM reduction can be ignored (this negligible reduction is due to the two stack transistors in the proposed 8T-cell). Benefiting differential output voltage in the read operation, sense amplifier design is... 

The fast growth of battery operated devices has made low power SRAM designs a necessity in recent years. Moreover, embedded SRAM units have become an important block in modern SoCs. The SRAM performance is limited by the cell stability during different operation. By adding extra transistor to the conventional 6T-cell, hold, read and write static noise margin (SNM) can be improved in the sub-threshold SRAM. In this paper we proposed a new 9T-cell SRAM that shows 80% and 50% improvement in read and write SNM respectively in comparison to the conventional 6T-cell SRAM. Using stack transistors in the leakage current path, the new structure shows lower bitline leakage assisting the sense... 

A fast statistical method for the analysis of the Read SNM of a 6 T SRAM cell in near/subthreshold region is proposed. The method is based on the nonlinear behavior of the cell. DIBL and body effects are thoroughly considered in the derivation of an accurate closed form solution for the Read Static Noise Margin (SNM) of the near/subthreshold SRAM cell. This method uses the state space equation to derive the Read SNM of the cell as a function of threshold voltage of cell transistors. This function shows the dependency of the Read SNM on sizing, VDD, temperature, and threshold voltage variations. It provides a fast reliability analysis for a cell array of a given size and a supply voltage. It... 

Bias temperature instability (BTI) is known as one serious reliability concern in nanoscale technologies. BTI gradually increases the absolute value of threshold voltage (Vth) of MOS transistors. The main consequence of Vth shift of the SRAM cell transistors is the static noise margin (SNM) degradation. The SNM degradation of SRAM cells results in bit-flip occurrences due to transient faults and should be monitored accurately. This paper proposes a sensor called write current-based BTI sensor (WCBS) to assess the BTI-aging state of SRAM cells. The WCBS measures BTI-induced SNM degradation of SRAM cells by monitoring the maximum write current shifts due to BTI. The observations show that the... 

This paper presents a robust and low-power single-ended robust 11T near-threshold SRAM cell in 10-nm FinFET technology. The proposed cell eliminates write disturbance and enhances write performance by disconnecting the path between cross-coupled inverters during the write operation. FinFETs suffer from width quantization, and SRAM performance is highly dependent to transistors sizing. The proposed structure with minimum sized tri-gate FinFETs operates without failure under major process variations. In addition, read disturbance is reduced by isolating the storage nodes during the read operations. To reduce power consumption this cell uses only one bit-line for both read and write operations.... 

In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the impact of aging on the interconnection network of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and propose novel approaches to mitigate the aging effects on the routing network. We first show the insignificant impact of aging on data integrity of FPGAs, i.e., static noise margin and soft error rate of the configuration cells, as well as we show the negligible impact of the mentioned degradations on the FPGA performance. As such, we focus on the performance degradation of datapath transistors. In this regard, we propose a routing accompanied by a placement algorithm that prevents constant stress on transistors by evenly distributing the...