Nvidia Corporation

Jason Golbus

Lalit Gupta

Jun Yang

Lei Wang

Guillermo Juan Rozas

Stephen Felix

Ge Yang

Spencer Montgomery Gold

Hua Chen

Hwong-Kwo Lin

Jing Guo

Eric H Voelkel

Jesse S Wang

Andreas J Gotterba

Haiyan Gong

Karthik Natarajan

Chi Keung Lee

Zhenye Jiang

Beibei Ren

Ka Yun Lee

Jesse San-Jey Wang

Kirk Twardowski

Chad Parsons

Karan Gupta

Amy Chen

Ramya Challa

Mechanisms to mitigate signal race conditions in circuits that utilize multiple voltage domains. The mechanisms are applicable in signal fanout scenarios where leakage becomes problematic to signal timing, such machine memory devices, e.g., volatile single port or multi-port memory devices such as SRAMs (volatile static random access memory) or other bit-storing cell arrangements that include memory cells and a hierarchical bitline structure including local bitlines for subsets of the memory banks and a global bitline spanning the subsets.

Contention-free dual-voltage logic cell

The disclosure provides improvements for transmitting data between different voltage domains of an IC, such as a chip. The disclosure introduces a data transfer circuit that uses a multi-voltage RAM, referred to herein as MVRAM, for transmitting data across the different voltage domains. The MVRAM has multiple memory cells with write ports and read ports on different clock and voltage domains. Accordingly, a write operation can occur completely on the write domain voltage and the read operation can occur completely on the read domain voltage. In one example, the data transfer circuit includes: (1) write logic operating at a first operating voltage, (2) read logic operating at second operating voltage, and (3) a MVRAM with write ports that operate under the first operating voltage and read ports that operate under the second operating voltage.

Multi-voltage RAM used to cross clock and voltage domains

A dual-domain dynamic multiplexer and a method of transitioning between asynchronous voltage and frequency domains. One embodiment of the dual-domain dynamic multiplexer includes: (1) a first domain having a first voltage and a first clock, and a second domain having a second voltage and a second clock, (2) a plurality of data and data select input pairs wherein a data input of an input pair is in the first domain and a data select input of an input pair is in the second domain, and (3) a pre-charge stage in the second domain that is energized upon an edge of the second clock, whereby one data and data input pair is enabled and data latched in the second domain upon another edge of the second clock.

Dual-domain dynamic multiplexer and method of transitioning between asynchronous voltage and frequency domains

A subsystem configured to select the power supply to a static random access memory cell compares the level of a dedicated memory supply voltage to the primary system supply voltage. The subsystem then switches the primary system supply to the SRAM cell when the system voltage is higher than the memory supply voltage with some margin. When the system voltage is lower than the memory supply voltage, with margin, the subsystem switches the memory supply to the SRAM cell. When the system voltage is comparable to the memory supply, the subsystem switches the system voltage to the SRAM cell if performance is a prioritized consideration, but switches the memory supply to the SRAM cell if power reduction is a prioritized consideration. In this manner, the system achieves optimum performance without incurring steady state power losses and avoids timing issues in accessing memory.

Power savings via selection of SRAM power source

Growing community of inventors

Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Jason Golbus