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Design and analysis of robust and wide operating low-power level-shifter for embedded dynamic random access memory

Published: 20 May 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Level shifters (LS) are crucial components in low power design where the die is segregated in multiple voltage domains. LS are used at the voltage domain interfaces to mitigate sneak path current. Another important application of LS is in high voltage drivers for designs where voltage boosting is needed for performance and functionality. We explore one such application in embedded Dynamic Random Access Memories (eDRAM) where LS is employed in the wordline path. Our investigation reveals that leakage power of LS can pose a serious threat by lowering the wordline voltage and subsequently affecting the speed and retention time of eDRAM. Furthermore the delay of LS under worse case process corners can cause functional discrepancies. We propose low-power pulsed-LS with supply gating to circumvent these issues. Our analysis indicate that pulsed-LS can improve the worst case speed from 2.7%-43%. We also propose power-gating for LSs to improve the retention time and bandwidth with minimal power and area overhead.

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  1. Design and analysis of robust and wide operating low-power level-shifter for embedded dynamic random access memory

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      GLSVLSI '14: Proceedings of the 24th edition of the great lakes symposium on VLSI
      May 2014
      376 pages
      ISBN:9781450328166
      DOI:10.1145/2591513
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 20 May 2014

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      Author Tags

      1. EDRAM
      2. low-power
      3. wide-operating level-shifters

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      GLSVLSI '14: Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI 2014
      May 21 - 23, 2014
      Texas, Houston, USA

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      GLSVLSI '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 49 of 179 submissions, 27%;
      Overall Acceptance Rate 312 of 1,156 submissions, 27%

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      Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI 2025
      June 30 - July 2, 2025
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