Modem Gain-Cell Memories in Advanced Technologies

With the advent of the slowdown in DRAM capacitor scaling [1] and the increased reliability problems of traditional 6T SRAM memories [2], industry and academia have looked for alternative memory cells. Among those, gain-cells have attracted significant attention due to their smaller size (compared to SRAM) and non-destructive read operation (compared to DRAM) as well as considerable low power and reasonable robustness. This paper first summarizes the available evidences of SRAM and eDRAM in commercial and test chips. Then, it analyzes the performance, reliability and scaling of eDRAM gain-cells in 10 and 7 nm FinFET technology; as well as above and below V
_T
(i.e. sub-threshold).