Heterogeneous SRAM cell sizing for low-power H.264 applications

Jinmo Kwon, Ik Joon Chang, Insoo Lee, Heemin Park, Jongsun Park

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    49 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    In low-voltage operation, static random-access memory (SRAM) bit-cells suffer from large failure probabilities with technology scaling. With the increasing failures, conventional SRAM memory is still designed without considering the importance differences found among the data stored in the SRAM bit-cells. This paper presents a heterogeneous SRAM sizing approach for the embedded memory of H.264 video processor, where the more important higher order data bits are stored in the relatively larger SRAM bit-cells and the less important bits are stored in the smaller ones. As a result, the failure probabilities significantly decrease for the SRAM cells storing the more important bits, which allows us to obtain the better video quality even in lower voltage operation. In order to find the SRAM bit-cell sizes that achieve the best video quality under SRAM area constraint, we propose a heterogeneous SRAM sizing algorithm based on a dynamic programming. Compared to the brute-force search, the proposed algorithm greatly reduces the computation time needed to select the SRAM bit-cell sizes of 8 bit pixel. Experimental results show that under iso-area condition, the heterogeneous SRAM array achieves significant PSNR improvements (average 4.49 dB at 900-mV operation) compared to the conventional one with identical cell sizing.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number6152179
    Pages (from-to)2275-2284
    Number of pages10
    JournalIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers
    Volume59
    Issue number10
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2012

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    Manuscript received March 01, 2011; revised July 12, 2011 and October 12, 2011; accepted November 24, 2011. Date of publication February 14, 2012; date of current version September 25, 2012. This work was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (2010-0004484). This paper was recommended by Associate Editor C.-C. Wang.

    Keywords

    • H.264 systems
    • SRAM bit-cell
    • low-power static random-access memory (SRAM)

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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