An Ultra-Low Power and High Speed Single Ended Sense Amplifier for Non-Volatile Memories

An ultra-low power and high performance voltage-mode sense amplifier is presented. Based on charge recycling between a tank capacitor and the bit line parasitic capacitor, a reference voltage is created dynamically and the memory precharge step starts from half the supply voltage. The precharge and word line activation are independent, avoiding the extra consumption due to the direct path between power supply and ground during precharge. The proposed circuit is implemented using a 55 nm UMC High Voltage CMOS technology with a power supply of 1.2V. Simulation results show a read access time of about 20.6 ns and an average power consumption of 0.56 μW/MHz/bit in typical operating conditions at 27 °C.