CMOS Design > Memories

Conclusion

This chapter has focused on memories, which are a very important part of modern integrated circuits. The static memory has been described first, with an illustration of design challenges and dangers in the case of five-transistor architecture. The 6-transistor cell has been presented together with some layout optimization techniques to achieve the most compact memory design. The column and row selection circuits have been rapidly described, as well as the sense amplifiers used to speed up the read cycle. The principles and technological challenges related to the dynamic RAM have been introduced, with focus on the embedded stacked capacitor. The ROM memory has also been introduced. Extensive details on the EEPROM memory and its FLASH derivative have been provided in this chapter. Finally, we introduced the principles and layout implementation of the ferro-electric RAM memory (FRAM), and concluded by a description of the asynchronous and synchronous memory interfaces.