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This article presents a 1.2-V, 1.8-Gb/s/pin 16-Tb NAND flash memory multi-chip package incorporating 16 dies of 1-Tb NAND flash memory and the third-generation F-chip. The proposed third-generation F-chip is developed to meet the performance requirements of a high-capacity storage device that adopts a PCIe Gen four-host interface for higher data throughput. It is implemented with dual bi-directional transceiver architecture and signal retiming scheme to maximize the valid data window opening on solid-state drive (SSD) channels. Also, it facilitates training between F-chip and NAND using an on-chip delay-locked loop whose locking is proposed in strobe-based NAND systems to achieve sufficient signal integrity (SI) of the in-package channel at a speed of 1.8 Gb/s/pin. Embedded built-in self-test evaluates un-selected paths and determines if re-training is required without losing data throughput performance. This work achieves a 35% improvement in the I/O operational speed performance and a 23% reduction in the I/O power consumption in comparison with the previous generations.

A full 3D graphics pipeline is investigated, and optimizations of graphics architecture are assessed for satisfying the performance requirements and overcoming the limited system resources found in mobile terminals. Two mobile 3D graphics processor architectures, RAMP and DigiAcc, are proposed based on the analysis, and a prototype development platform (REMY) is implemented. REMY includes a software graphics library and simulation environment developed for more flexible realization of mobile 3D graphics. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of mobile 3D graphics with 3.6 Mpolygons/s at 155 mW power consumption for full 3D operation.

A 121-mm/sup 2/ graphics LSI is designed and implemented for portable two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) graphics and MPEG-4 applications. The LSI contains a RISC processor with a multiply-accumulate unit (MAC), a 3-D rendering engine, a programmable power optimizer, and 29-Mb embedded DRAM. The chip is built in a 0.16-/spl mu/m pure DRAM technology to reduce the fabrication cost. Texture-mapped 3-D graphics with perspective-correct address calculation and bilinear MIPMAP filtering can be realized while consuming the low power with the help of depth-first clock gating, address alignment logic, and embedded DRAM. Programmable clocking allows the LSI to operate in lower power modes for various applications. The chip consumes less than 210 mW, delivering 66 Mpixels/s and 264 Mtexel/s texture-mapped pixels with real-time special effects such as full-scene antialiasing and motion blur.

A low-power three-dimensional (3-D) rendering engine is implemented as part of a mobile personal digital assistant (PDA) chip. Six-megabit embedded DRAM macros attached to 8-pixel-parallel rendering logic are logically localized with a 3.2-GB/s runtime reconfigurable bus, reducing the area by 25% compared with conventional local frame-buffer architectures. The low power consumption is achieved by polygon-dependent access to the embedded DRAM macros with line-block mapping providing read-modify-write data transaction. The 3-D rendering engine with 2.22-Mpolygons/s drawing speed was fabricated using 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS embedded memory logic technology. Its area is 24 mm/sup 2/ and its power consumption is 120 mW.

A low-power multimedia processor for mobile applications is presented. An 80-MHz 32-b RISC with enhanced multiplier, two 20-MHz hardware accelerators with 7.125-Mb embedded DRAM for MPEG-4 visual SP@L1 decoding and 3-D graphics processing, 2-kB dual-port SRAM, and peripheral blocks are integrated together on a single chip, MPEG-4 SP@L1 video decoding and 3-D graphics rendering with a 16-b depth-buffer alpha-blending double-buffering and gouraud-shading features at 2, 2-Mpolygons/s speed are realized with the help of the dedicated hardware accelerators/ The architecture of the processor is optimized in terms of power consumption and performance, and various low-power circuit techniques are adopted in each hardware block. The chip is implemented using 0.18-/spl mu/m embedded memory logic (EML) technology. Its area is 84 mm/sup 2/, and power consumption is 160 mW when all of the functions are activated.