• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2007

In recent few years, low-power electronics has been a leading drive for technology developments nourished by rapidly growing market share. Mobile DRAM, as a fundamental block of hand-held devices, is now becoming a product developed by limitless competition. To support application specific mobile features, various new power-reduction schemes have been proposed and adopted by standardization. Tightened power budget in battery-operated systems makes conventional schemes not acceptable and increases difficulty of the circuit design. The mobile DRAM has successfully moved down to 1.5V era, and now it is about to move to 1.2V. Further voltage scaling, however, presents critical problems which must be overcome. This paper reviews critical issues in mobile DRAM design and various circuit schemes to solve the problems. Focused on analog circuits, bitline sensing, IO line sensing, refresh-related schemes, DC bias generation, and schemes for higher data rate are covered.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.485-486
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• 2006

This paper proposes a novel low-cost CMOS temperature sensor for controlling the self-refresh period of a mobile DRAM. In this temperature sensor, ring oscillators composed of cascaded inverter stages are used to obtain the temperature of the chip. This method is highly area-efficient, simple and easy for IC implementation as compared to traditional temperature sensors based on analog bandgap reference circuits. The proposed CMOS temperature sensor was fabricated with 80 nm 3-metal DRAM process. It occupies a silicon area of only about less than $0.02\;mm^2$ at $10^{\circ}C$ resolution with under 5uW power consumption at 1 sample/s processing rate. This area is about 33% of conventional temperature sensor in mobile DRAM.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.163-166
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• 2004

모바일향 90nm DRAM을 개발하기 위하여 비대칭 채널 구조를 갖는 Recess Channel Array Transistor (RCAT)로 cell transistor를 구현하였다. DRAM cell transistor에서 junction leakage current 증가는 DRAM retention time 열화에 심각한 영향을 미치는 요인으로 알려져 있으며, DRAM의 minimum feature size가 점점 감소함에 따라 short channel effect의 영향으로 junction leakage current는 더욱 더 증가하게 된다. 본 실험에서는 short channel effect의 영향에 의한 junction leakage current를 감소시키기 위하여 Recess Channel Array Transistor를 도입하였고, cell transistor의 채널 영역을 비대칭으로 형성하여 data retention time을 증가시켰다. 비대칭 채널 구조을 이용하여 Recess Channel Array Transistor를 구현한 결과, sub-threshold 특성과 문턱전압, Body effect, 그리고, GIDL 특성에는 큰 유의차가 보이지 않았고, I-V특성인 드레인 포화전류(IDS)는 대칭 채널 구조인 transistor 대비 24.8% 정도 증가하였다. 그리고, data retention time은 2배 정도 증가하였다. 본 실험에서 얻은 결과는 향후 저전압 DRAM 개발과 응용에 상당한 기여를 할 것으로 기대된다.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.533-534
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• 2008

By using Dual Port DRAM to Multi-media SoC, an improved performance is achieved in this paper. The proposed scheme greatly help the multi-media SoC like a application for full HDTV, and it can be extended to the application field which is needed the low access latency with heavy traffic. Additionally, the proposed scheme help to down the BUM cost of system.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.65-70
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• 2021

Recently, as the number of mobile apps rapidly increases, the memory size of smartphones keeps increasing. Smartphone memory consists of DRAM and as it is a volatile medium, continuous refresh operations for all cells should be performed to maintain the contents. Thus, the power consumption of memory increases in proportion to the DRAM size of the system. There are attempts to configure the memory system with low-power non-volatile memory instead of DRAM to reduce the power consumption of smartphones. However, non-volatile memory has weaknesses in write operations, so analysis of write behaviors is a prerequisite to realize this in practical systems. In this paper, we extract memory reference traces of mobile apps and analyze their characteristics specially focusing on write operations. The results of this paper will be helpful in the design of memory management systems consisting of non-volatile memory in future smartphones.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Next Generation Computing
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.40-51
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• 2017

Recently, as mobile workloads are becoming more data-intensive, high data bandwidth is required for mobile memory which also consumes non-negligible system energy. A variety of researches and technologies are under development to improve and optimize mobile memory technologies. However, a comprehensive study on the latest mobile memory technologies (LPDDR or Wide I/O) has not been extensively performed yet. To construct high-performance and energy-efficient mobile memory systems, quantitative and detailed analysis of these technologies is crucial. In this paper, we simulate the computer system which adopts mobile DRAM technologies (Wide I/O and LPDDR3). Based on our detailed and comprehensive results, we analyze important factors that affect performance and energy-efficiency of mobile DRAM technologies and show which part can be improved to construct better systems.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.433-434
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• 2007

This paper describes a low-voltage dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) focusing on subthreshold leakage reduction during self-refresh (sleep) mode. By sharing a power switch, multiple iterative circuits such as row and column decoders have a significantly reduced subthreshold leakage current. To reduce the leakage current of complex logic gates, dual channel length scheme and input vector control method are used. Because all node voltages during the standby mode are deterministic, zigzag super-cutoff CMOS is used, allowing to Preserve internal data. MTCMOS technique Is also used in the circuits having no need to preserve internal data. Sub-1.2-V 1-Gb mobile DDR DRAM employing all these low-power techniques was designed in a 60 nm CMOS technology and achieved over 77% reduction of overall leakage current during the self-refresh mode.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.42 no.11
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• pp.1314-1321
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• 2015

Mobile devices employ buffer cache mechanisms, just as in computer systems such as desktops or servers, to mitigate the performance gap between main memory and secondary storage. However, DRAM has a problem in that it accelerates battery consumption by performing refresh operations periodically to maintain the stored data. In this paper, we propose a novel buffer cache scheme to increase the battery lifecycle in mobile devices based on a hybrid main memory architecture consisting of DRAM and non-volatile PCM. We also suggest a new buffer cache policy that allocates buffers based on process states to optimize the performance and endurance of PCM. In particular, our algorithm allocates each page to the appropriate position corresponding to the state of the application that owns the page, and tries to ensure a rapid response of foreground applications even with a small amount of DRAM memory. The experimental results indicate that the proposed scheme reduces the elapsed time of foreground applications by 58% on average and power consumption by 23% on average without negatively impacting the performance of background applications.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.219-224
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• 2017

Recently, the importance of DRAM is very significant not only in embedded systems and mobile devices but also in high-end modern microprocessors and multicore processors. To keep up with this, both industry and academia have actively studied various types of future DRAMs. Therefore, accurate DRAM model is requisite when evaluating the microprocessor performance. In this paper, a microprocessor trace-driven simulator which can couple with the cycle-accurate DRAM simulator has been developed. Using SPEC 2000 benchmarks as input, the effect of cycle-accurate DDR3 model on the microprocessor performance has been evaluated.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.203-208
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• 2017

Recently, the importance of DRAM is very significant in multicore processors which are widely used in computers, laptops, tablet PCs, and mobile devices. To keep up with this, both industry and academia have actively studied various types of future DRAMs. Therefore, accurate DRAM model is requisite when evaluating the multicore processor performance. In this paper, a multicore processor trace-driven simulator which can couple with the cycle-accurate DRAM simulator has been developed. Using SPEC 2000 benchmarks as input, the effect of cycle-accurate DDR3 model on the multicore processor performance has been evaluated.