Register-Based Parallel Pipelined Scheme for Synchronous DRAM

동기식 기억소자를 위한 레지스터를 이용한 병렬 파이프라인 방식

Recently, along wtih the advance of high-performance system, synchronous DRAM's (SDRAM's) which provide consecutive data output synchronized with an external clock signal, have been reported. However, in the conventional SDRAM's which utilize a multi-stage serial pipelined scheme, the column path is divided into multi-stages depending on CAS latency N. Thus, as the operating speed and CAS latency increase, new stages must be added, thereby causing a large area penalty due to additinal latches and I/O lines. In the proposed register-based parallel pipelined scheme, (N-1) registers are located between the read data bus line pair and the data output buffer and the coming data are sequentially stored. Since the column data path is not divided and the read data is directly transmitted to the registers, the busrt read operation can easily be achieved at higher frequencies without a large area penalty and degradation of internal timing margin. Simulation results for 0.32um-Tech. 4-Bank 64M SDRAM show good operation at 200MHz and an area increment is less than 0.1% when CAS latency N is increased from 3 to 4.. This pipelined scheme is more advantageous as the operating frequency increases.