Bit Error Rate Estimation in SRAM Considering Temperature Fluctuation

Yuki Kagiyama,  Shunsuke Okumura,  Koji Yanagida,  Shusuke Yoshimoto,  Yohei Nakata,  Shintaro Izumi,  Hiroshi Kawaguchi,  Masahiko Yoshimoto
Kobe University


Abstract

The performance of SRAM varies depending on operating environment. In this paper, we especially focus on a bit error rate (BER) when considering temperature fluctuation. In the SRAM, a read margin decreases at high temperature whereas the write margin degrades at low temperature. The performance of SRAM is generally determined by the read operation margin because a half-select issue must be considered even in the write operation. As a metric of the SRAM’s performance, we adopt a static noise margin (SNM), with which we introduce three methods to estimate the BER considering temperature fluctuation. Method 1 calculates SNM many times with Monte Carlo simulation and BER is defined the number of cell which has no margin. Method 2 uses an assumption SNM follows normal distribution and BER is defined a probability that SNM is less than zero. Method 3 is same as method 2 except SNM’s define. Method 3 is considered that SNM is determined only one square, and is not smaller one of two squares. The BER estimations are compared with a test chip result implemented in a 65-nm CMOS technology. In method 1, it is difficult to estimate the Vmin at large memory capacity because of its long simulation time. Compared with the measured Vmin at 128-Kb memory capacity, those of method 2 and 3 are lower by 11.10 % and 4.09 %, respectively. And Vmin is both 0.04 V at 128-Kb capacity when temperature fluctuates from 25°C to 100°C.