A 1.8-V 128-Mb mobile DRAM with double boosting pump, hybrid current sense amplifier, and dual-referenced adjustment scheme for temperature sensor

Abstract

To verify three important circuit schemes suitable for DRAMs in mobile applications, a 1.8-V 128-Mb SDRAM was implemented with a 0.15-μm technology. To achieve an ideal 33% efficiency, the double boosting pump uses two capacitor's series connection at pumping phase, while they are precharged in parallel. The hybrid folded current sense amplifier together with a novel replica inverter connection improved power and speed performances. Also, a dual-referenced adjustment scheme for a temperature sensor was proposed to allow a very high accuracy in tuning. Without loss in productivity, the implemented dual-referenced searching technique achieved tuning error of less than ±2.5°C.