A Fast, Reliable and Wide-Voltage-Range In-Memory Computing Architecture

As the computational complexity of applications on the consumer market, such as high-definition video encoding and deep neural networks, become ever more demanding, novel ways to efficiently compute data intensive workloads are being explored. In this context, In-Memory Computing (IMC) solutions, and particularly bitline computing in SRAM, appear promising as they mitigate one of the most energy consuming aspects in computation: data movement. While IMC architectural level characteristics have been defined by the research community, only a few works so far have explored the implementation of such memories at a low level. Furthermore, these proposed solutions are either slow (<;1GHz), area hungry (10T SRAM), or suffer from read disturb and corruption issues. Overall, there is no extensive design study considering realistic assumptions at the circuit level. In this work we propose a fast (up to 2.2Ghz), 6T SRAM-based, reliable (no read disturb issues), and wide voltage range (from 0.6 to 1V) IMC architecture using local bitlines. Beyond standard read and write, the proposed architecture can perform copy, addition and shift operations at the array level. As addition is the slowest operation, we propose a modified carry chain adder, providing a 2X carry propagation improvement. The proposed architecture is validated using a 28nm bulk high performances technology PDK with CMOS variability and post-layout simulations. High density SRAM bitcells (0.127μm) enable area efficiency of 59.7% for a 256X128 array, on par with current industrial standards.