A 1‐GHz GC‐eDRAM in 7‐nm FinFET with static retention time at 700 mV for ultra‐low power on‐chip memory applications.

Conventional static random‐access memory (SRAM) suffers from high leakage power in advanced complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor nodes. Meanwhile, gain‐cell embedded dynamic random‐access memory (GC‐eDRAM) is an area‐efficient alternative to SRAM, although it requires periodic refresh cycles. In this regard, this study proposes a fin field‐effect transistor (FinFET)‐based 5T GC‐eDRAM bitcell that addresses the leakage power issue of SRAM while avoiding the bandwidth‐consuming refreshes of GC‐eDRAM. Furthermore, for the feasibility of scaling down transistors, the gain‐cell design is based on the FinFET, which overcomes short‐channel problems. The proposed 5T bitcell provides additional internal feedback relative to the 4T all‐nMOS fully depleted‐silicon on insulator (FD‐SOI) gain cell to ensure the static retention of both "1" and "0" data. The 2‐kB array was simulated by employing a 7‐nm FinFET predictive technology model (PTM) using HSPICE. The simulation results show that the proposed 5T bitcell (at 0.7 V) enables over 13× smaller data retention power and 10× area reduction compared to the 4T all‐nMOS GC‐eDRAM cell in a 28‐nm FD‐SOI technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]