CMOSP18 FD-SOI Technology Based MCU Achieving High Performance of 1.2GHz Using High Speed, Optimized Leakage & High Density Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM)

Tightly coupled memories (TCM) are high performance memories which dictate the overall performance of a processor. Physically these embedded memories are present very close to the processors and any enhancement in these memories benefits the processor. Two variants of memory instances were developed to achieve better performance as well as leakage for the processor core in CMOSP18 technology. The memory instances which will be placed farther from the processor core were optimized for performance while ones which will be placed closer to the processor core were optimized for leakage with minimal impact in performance. Both the memory variants were developed using high density bitcell to reduce area and hence the RC delay associated between processor core and memory leading to overall gain in performance. On benchmarking the design with respect to competitor TCM design substantial gain was observed in all metrics - performance(reduction in access + setuptime by 16%), leakage(reduced by 33%) and area(reduced by 17%).