A 1.0 V 230 MHz column-access embedded DRAM macro for portable MPEG applications

Previous embedded DRAMs (eDRAMs) have the dual ports on the sense amplifier and wide I/O buses on memory arrays for high data rate in graphic controller chips. This causes decreased cell efficiency and increased power consumption in burst operation compared to commodity DRAM. This eDRAM macro provides the low power consumption and small die needed in portable multi media equipment with MPEG logic, such as video phone, video camera, and personal digital assistant (PDA). To incorporate 0.13 μm logic technology for low power, the power supply is reduced to 1.0 V for logic and 2.5 V for other circuitry. This paper describes realizing fast memory access even at such low voltage.