PVTA-Aware Performance SRAM Sensor for IoT Applications

Internet of Things (IoT) applications present significant challenges regarding security, safe operation and power management. In the hardware part of each IoT device, CMOS memories occupy a significant percentage of the Integrated Circuits’ silicon area. With device scaling down, performance and reliability challenges exist, namely caused by parametric variations such as Process (P), power supply Voltage (V) and Temperature (T) variations and Aging (A) or, in a general perspective, PVTA variations. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel, on-line, PVTA-aware performance sensor for CMOS SRAM memory cells, sensing and signaling performance degradation, caused e.g. by PVTA variations. The detection strategy consists on the active monitoring of the bit lines, during the read and write operations. In the presence of PVTA degradations, read and write operations have slower transitions, which indicate performance degradation, thus increasing the probability of error occurrence. Hence, when transitions do not occur during the expected time frame, an error signal is flagged to the output due to a slow transition. The sensor’s correct operation is demonstrated using SPICE simulations for 65 nm and 22 nm technologies, allowing to show its effectiveness on monitoring performance and aging degradation on SRAM memory blocks.

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