Advanced memory solutions for emerging circuits and systems

This paper presents the most recent results of LETI memory circuit design activities to address the increasing memory demand due to emerging nomad markets. We have investigated both volatile and non-volatile memory solutions with different technologies such as 3D CoolCube™, TFET and ReRAM. Firstly, the presented 4T SRAM bitcell becomes functional with 30% area reduction with respect to standard 6T bitcells. Secondly, the reconfigurable CAM/SRAM outperforms the state of the art, with operations at 1.56GHz and 0.13fJ/bit energy per search. Furthermore, the proposed TFET-based designs are competitive in terms of area and performance and reduce significantly the leakage currents. Finally, the proposed compensation technique in crosspoint memory enables large memory arrays, while reducing the impact of temporal and spatial variations.