A FinFET-based low-power, stable 8T SRAM cell with high yield

Abstract

Modern battery-enabled systems, such as IoT, require SRAM cells that can maintain data and respond quickly to requests. However, achieving low-power and stable SRAM cells, which are essential for IoT systems, is not possible with CMOS technology due to scaling issues. As a result, new nanoscale devices, such as FinFET, have been introduced as a potential replacement for CMOS in SRAM design. This paper presents a new FinFET-based 8 T SRAM cell with separate reading and writing paths. The cell uses read-decoupling and write-assist pull-down path cut techniques to improve read stability and writability, respectively. Single-ended reading and writing structures reduce power consumption, and stacking transistors, along with read bitline leakage elimination, reduces leakage power dissipation. The proposed cell’s efficiency is evaluated using HSPICE simulator with 10-nm FinFET technology and is compared with conventional 6 T, single-bitline 7 T (SB7T), single-ended 8 T (SE8T), and transmission gate read-decoupled 9 T (TRD9T) SRAM cells at VDD = 0.35 V. The proposed cell improves read stability by 2.59×/1.04 × and enhances writability by 1.38×/1.01 × compared to 6 T/TRD9T and 6 T/SB7T, respectively. It also reduces read power by 28.25 %/19.60 % compared to the 6 T/SB7T and reduces write power by at most 33.40 % and at least 5.46 %. Moreover, the leakage power is reduced by at least 5.80 %. However, the proposed cell increases read/write delay by 1.77×/1.40 × and shows 1.23 × larger layout area compared to 6 T.