Ben-gurion University of the Negev Research and Development Authority

Lidor Pergament

Alexander Fish

Adam Teman

Omer Cohen

A memory cell with an internal supply feedback loop is provided herein. The memory cell includes a latch having two storage nodes Q and QB, and a supply node. A gating device couples the supply node of the latch to the supply voltage. The gating device is controlled by a feedback loop coming from storage node QB. Due to the aforementioned asymmetric topology, the writing of logic '1' and the writing of logic '0' are carried out differently. Contrary to standard SRAM cells, in the hold states, only the QB storage node presents a valid value of stored data. The feedback loop cuts off the supply voltage for the latch such that the latch is no longer an inverting latch. By cutting off the supply voltage at the stable hold states, while maintaining readability of the memory cell, leakage currents associated with the hold states are eliminated altogether.

Ultra low power memory cell with a supply feedback loop configured for minimal leakage operation

An SRAM memory cell with an internal supply feedback loop is provided herein. The memory cell includes a latch that has a storage node Q, a storage node QB, a supply node, and a ground node. The supply node is coupled via a gating device to a supply voltage and ground node is connected to ground. In addition, storage node Q is fed back via feedback loop into a control node of the gating device. In operation, writing into the memory cell may be carried out in a similar manner to dual port SRAM cells, utilizing one or two write circuitries and for writing into storage node Q and storage node QB respectively. Differently from standard SRAM cells, the feedback loop, by controlling the gating device is configured to weaken the write contention.

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Tel Aviv, Israel

Lidor Pergament