Developing a Tool for Low-Power Memory Cell Design

Abstract

Memory devices are an important part of integrated circuits. If previously the storage capacity of memory devices did not exceed a few tens of kilobytes, now it reaches terabytes. Due to this, the design of memory devices has become more complicated both technically and temporally. Particularly improvement of the power consumption and aging parameters of memory devices has become difficult. One of the most important problems in modern integrated circuits is the reduction of power consumption. Approximately 80% of the total integrated circuit area is occupied by memory devices, they account for more than 60…70% of the total energy consumption. In static random-access memory devices, the sense amplifiers are the ones with the most power consumption. In the process of reading, they account for about 40% of the total power consumption. The design time is also a major issue in the memory device production. That's why memory devices are designed automatically using existing special libraries. And the elements in the memory devices are designed manually, which affects their design time and cost. This article proposes a software tool that allows to reduce the power consumption of sense amplifiers programmatically. In addition, it allows to effectively study the preselected parameters of the amplifiers.