Su-Yeon Doo

A 40nm 2Gb 7Gb/s/pin GDDR5 SDRAM with a programmable DQ ordering crosstalk equalizer and adjustable clock-tracking BW

Most DRAM interfaces such as GDDR5 and DDR3 use parallel single-ended signaling due to pin-count restriction and backward compatibility. Notwithstanding poor signal and power integrity issues, GDDR5 speed reached beyond 5Gb/s in recent years by utilizing data bus inversion, error-detection coding, data training and channel equalization [1–3]. However, channel crosstalk is becoming a major barrier to further speed improvement. A common solution for channel crosstalk reduction at the system level is to use a shielding line or wide spacing between signal lines, but increasing the number of layers in a chip package and PCB increase system cost. To remove the shielding lines and increase speed, this paper presents a channel crosstalk equalizer with programmable signal ordering capability for the DRAM transmitter. In addition, this paper addresses tri-mode clocking to reduce the system jitter for better timing margin: PLL off, LC-PLL and injection-locked oscillator.

25.1 A 3.2Gb/s/pin 8Gb 1.0V LPDDR4 SDRAM with integrated ECC engine for sub-1V DRAM core operation

The recent revolution in handheld computing with high-speed cellular network made mobile processors have multi-cores and powerful 3D graphic engines that support FHD (1920×1080) or even higher resolutions. Consequently, the memory bandwidth requirement has also been increasing, requiring a next-generation mobile DRAM standard. In this paper, we present a power-efficient LPDDR4 SDRAM operating at 3.2Gb/s/pin. Our LPDDR4 DRAM offers 2× bandwidth with improved power efficiency over LPDDR3 SDRAMs, due to the 2-channel architecture and low-voltage-swing terminated logic (LVSTL) [1]. Moreover, the supply voltage is further reduced to 1.0V in this work, 0.1V lower than the LPDDR4 standard, for extra power saving.

A 3.2 Gbps/pin 8 Gbit 1.0 V LPDDR4 SDRAM With Integrated ECC Engine for Sub-1 V DRAM Core Operation

A 1.0 V 8 Gbit LPDDR4 SDRAM with 3.2 Gbps/pin speed and integrated ECC engine for sub-1 V DRAM core is presented. DRAM internal read-modify-write operation for data masked write makes the integrated ECC engine possible in a commodity DRAM. Time interleaved latency and IO control circuits enable 1.0 V operation at target speed. To reach 3.2 Gbps with improved power efficiency over conventional mobile DRAMs, the following IO features are introduced: Low voltage swing terminated logic drivers with VOH level calibration and periodic ZQ calibration, unmatched DQ/DQS scheme and DQS oscillator for DQS tree delay tracking. This chip is fabricated in 25 nm DRAM process on 88.1 mm 2 die area.

A 40nm 7Gb/s/pin single-ended transceiver with jitter and ISI reduction techniques for high-speed DRAM interface

A 7Gb/s single ended transceiver with low jitter and ISI is implemented in 40nm DRAM process. DRAM optimized LC PLL achieves inductor Q of 3.86 and results in random jitter of 670fs rms. A clock tree regulator with closed loop replica path reduces low as well as high frequency noise. RX 2-tap hybrid DFE combining sampling and integration methods reduces power and area by 37% and 24%, compared to the integrating DFE. Moreover, on-chip de-emphasis circuit in TX multiplexer reduces ISI of both on and off chip.

23.4 An extremely low-standby-power 3.733Gb/s/pin 2Gb LPDDR4 SDRAM for wearable devices

With the growth of wearable devices, such as smart watches and smart glasses, there is an increasing demand for lower power dissipation, to achieve longer battery life with limited battery capacity. Nevertheless, memory bandwidth needs to increase to support high-resolution graphic engines. Since most wearable devices are event driven, they consume a bulk of power in standby mode. Therefore, it is crictical to reduce standby-mode power, as well as improve active-mode power efficiency. However, DRAMs periodic self-refresh, critical for data retention, imposes a lower bound on standby-mode power. This paper presents a 2Gb LPDDR4 SDRAM with 0.15mW standby mode power, which is 66% lower than the standby power for a memory of the same density. The proposed memory also achieves a bandwidth of 3.733Gb/s/pin. To extremely reduce standby mode power, an in-DRAM error-correction-code (ECC) engine is used for self-refresh current reduction. Intensive power gating in deep-power-down (DPD) mode, a temperature controlled internal power generator and an aggressively increased gate length is also used to reduce leakage current. In addition, active-mode power efficiency is improved by using a dual-page-size scheme.