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Design Of Ultra Low Power

SRAM
Vivek Nautiyal, Ashok Mishra
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Agenda

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Why Low Power??
Low power design is one of the key focus area today in very
deep sub-micron designs.

Because CONSUMER want their cell phones to be recharged

only once a week.

Because CONSUMER want to see at least a dozen movies on

the go before they think of recharging it.

Because CONSUMER may sound UNREASONABLE but

can never be wrong

Because we all are driven by WHAT CONSUMER WANTS

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Power Consumption: A Perspective
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180 130 90
Active Power
Leakage Power

Leakage power has transformed itself from a non-issue to nightmare.

Moral of the STORY:

You save little power when you are not talking your on
your mobile phone; better keep talking
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Why Low Power SRAM??

On chip usage of SRAM is

increasing with increasing
processor capacity.

The Power consumed by SRAMs

are significant portion of overall
chip power consumption.
Cache array
PIII chip Snapshot
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Power Components in SRAM

Total power in a CMOS SRAM can be represented by:

Dynamic and short circuit power constitutes the total

active power.

Dynamic power occurs due to Charge/Discharge of CAPs

Short circuit power occurs during switching of CMOS Txs.

Leakage power occurs primarily due to subthreshold

leakage, diode leakage & gate leakage.

Becoming increasingly dominant in deep submicron era.

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Active Power Reduction Techniques

Active Power:

P = .C.V.clk

Active Power can be saved:

1.
By reducing activity & amount of switching cap in memory

Banking of memory array into smaller sub-arrays can reduce

both & switching C.
2.
By reducing operating voltage

Operating voltage can be reduced, where ever possible.

Introduce voltage islands

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Memory Partitioning

Partition the memory to divide

the overall CAPs into smaller
ones.

Restrict the activity into a

smaller sub-array.

Consider the case of a 64k

density memory arranged in a
single array.

While in operation all the 256

bitlines will discharge, with
each bitline routed length equal
to the height of 256 bitcells.
256 rows
256 cols
Bit cell array
Periphery logic
P
e
r
i
p
h
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r
y

l
o
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i
c

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128 rows
128 cols
Periphery Logic
Bit cell array
128 rows
128 cols
Bit cell array
128 rows
128 cols
Bit cell array
128 rows
128 cols
Bit cell array
Memory Partitioning

The same memory, divided into 4 sub-arrays.

There would be only 1/4

th
of BL CAP charge and discharge wrt un-
partitioned memory.

Moral of the STORY:

DIVIDEem AND YOU RULE
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Memory Partitioning: DATA
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Monolithic
Two Bank
Four Bank
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Voltage Island

Memory Readability/Writability dictates the minimum operating voltage of

memory.

Periphery can work at lower voltages than memory bit cells.

Create voltage islands: Periphery operates at lower operating voltage than

bit cell array.
Core
Lower Vdd High Vdd
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Periphery
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Voltage Island
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i_read i_write i_leak
32768x16m32,
VDDP=VDDC=1.32
32768x16m32,
VDDP=1.0, VDDC=1.32

Moral of the story:

BE STINGY, GIVE ONLY AS MUCH AS ONE REALLY
NEEDS
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Leakage Power; The Trouble Infinite

It is a worst kind of nightmare

It comes to fore while sleep

Leakage power poses one of

the biggest challenges as
technology scales.

Primarily three kind of leakage

components:

Sub-threshold Leakage

Gate Leakage

Diode Leakage
Gate Leakage
Gate
Subthreshold
Leakage
Source Drain
Reverse Biased
Junction BTBT
Bulk
n+ n+
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Controlling Leakage

Sub-threshold leakage

Grows exponentially with the

lowering of Vth

Grows exponentially with

increasing T

Grows linearly with total width

of transistors

Gate Leakage

Increases exponentially with

decrease of Tox

Can be solved by high-k

materials

Diode Leakage

Leakage proportional to
diffusion area

Exponentially sensitive to high

temperature and high voltage
/ /
1
(1 )
th
V nkT V kT
sub
I KWe e

=
2
/
2
ox
T V
ox
ox
V
I K W e
T
o
| |
=
|
\ .
,
( 1)
qV
kT
pn leakage p n
I J e A
+
=
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Controlling Memory Leakage

The following techniques could be

employed to check leakage in
SRAMs

Multi Vt design (HVT reduces

leakage)

Usage of non-minimum gate length

transistors in design (It increases
the channel resistance to reduce
leakage)

Back gate biasing (Increased Vt

results in lower leakage)

Power gating to facilitate different

operating voltage modes.


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Multi-Threshold Transistor Design

Use combination of HVT, RVT or LVT transistors in design.

HVT gives lowest leakage, LVT gives highest performance.

Carefully analyze critical paths in memory

Use RVT, LVT in critical paths as needed

Use HVT transistors in non critical paths of memory

One can judiciously select high Vt transistors for the devices which
contribute more towards leakage like core cells and big drivers.

Performance critical circuits such as pre-charges, sense-amplifiers

etc. should use high speed devices.

Moral of the story:

Choose horses for courses, It helps..

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Multi-Threshold Transistor Design: Data
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HVT RVT
RVT Only
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Non-Minimum Gate lengths in design

Non minimum gate lengths results in higher threshold voltages

which in turn reduces leakage.

Just like using HVT transistors in non-critical paths, use bigger

gate length transistors.

Non minimum gate lengths provides better control in hands of

designer over Vt granularity.

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Non-Minimum Gate lengths in design

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Back Gate Biasing

The other way threshold can be raised to reduce leakage is by

body biasing.

During standby, when the memory operation is not going on,

through back gate bias, the threshold of the devices could be
raised.

Using back gate bias during active operation of memory is

pretty complicated to handle

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Power Gating

Power gating is all about controlling supply voltage based on

the state of SRAM.

The SRAM can be operated under following modes once

power gating is introduces:

Active Mode : Normal operation

Retention mode : periphery power switched OFF, core supply ON

Without power gating : Full core supply

With power gating : Restricted core supply

Sleep mode : All power switched off ; data lost

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Where to gate ????
CORE
RETN
CORE
RETN
CORE
RETN
CORE
RETN
CORE
RETN
RET
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Leakage data with power gating
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Standard
Retention
Power gating
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Design consideration with power gating