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A 333MHz DRAM with Floating Body Cell (FBC). VLSI Systems I Fall 2007 Hamid Abbasalizadeh. Introduction to the Floating Body Cell (FBC) [1]. Berkeley Started the FBC and then Toshiba continued. Intel introduced more advanced one using (two gates) front and back.
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A 333MHz DRAM with Floating Body Cell (FBC) VLSI Systems I Fall 2007 Hamid Abbasalizadeh
Introduction to the Floating Body Cell (FBC) [1] • Berkeley Started the FBC and then Toshiba continued. • Intel introduced more advanced one using (two gates) front and back. • The idea is to eliminate the capacitor from conventional DRAM; therefore, it is more denser faster and easier to make, but still slower than SRAMs. • Floating Body (FB) part retains the charge based on the thickness of the Bottom Oxide (BOX), and the BG voltage difference. • FBC cells do not need to be refreshed every cycle. They only need to be refilled with a few holes for logic “1” that is way faster than refreshing time of the conventional DRAMs. [1] http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36285
Paper’s Objectives [2] • To show by Monte Carlo simulation that FBC DRAM’s read cycle speed can go up to 333MHz. • This improvement is done by introducing a symmetrical sense amplifier with an improved current mirror ratio. • Improvement of the sense amplifier means reducing the tPREAMP. FBC cell only need to be restored for logic ‘1’, and it only needs to be refilled with a few holes lost by charge pumping phenomenon every time its word line is activated.
Speed Improvement of the Sense Amplifier by Making Current Mirror Symmetrical [2] Conventional Sense Amplifier Introduced Symmetrical Sense Amplifier
Pre-amp’s Gain and Speed &Speed Comparison Between FBC DRAMs & Conventional DRAMs [2] • Making ratio of M2/M1 larger than 1, in other words, increasing the gain of the pre-amplification reduces the tPREAMP , unless, there is a process variation. • In case of process variation, increasing the gain will make the pre-amp unstable. • Read cycle time (tRC) of the FBC DRAMs looks very promising compare to conventional DRAMs • Also FBC (3) is denser than a conventional 165nm DRAM [2] Hatsuda, K.; Fujita, K.; Ohsawa, T. ‘A333MHz random cycle DRAM using the floating body cell’ Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, Proceedings of the IEEE, Sept. 2005