A Novel Low-Power and High-Speed SOI SRAM With Actively Body-Bias Controlled (ABC) Technology for Emerging Generations

Abstract

An actively body-bias controlled (ABC) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) static random access memory (SRAM) connecting the bodies of the access and the driver transistors with the word line is proposed to realize high-speed and low-voltage operation. We developed the direct body contact to apply forward biases to the bodies without increases in the area penalty and the parasitic gate capacitance. An increase of the standby current does not occur because the body biases are not applied when the word-line voltage is low level. It is demonstrated that a significant speed improvement and a reduction of performance variations for the SRAM are achieved by applying the body bias. Neutron-accelerated soft-error tests reveal that the ABC structure suppresses soft-error events due to the body-tied SOI structure. In summary, the ABC SOI technology is one of the countermeasures for emerging generations.