An Energy-Efficient and Robust 10T SRAM Based In-Memory Computing Architecture
An Energy-Efficient and Robust 10T SRAM Based In-Memory Computing Architecture
(VLSID)
2023 36th International Conference on VLSI Design and 2023 22nd International Conference on Embedded Systems (VLSID) | 979-8-3503-4678-7/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/VLSID57277.2023.00039
Abstract—In-Memory Computing (IMC) is emerging as a new II. BACKGROUND AND R ELATED WORK
paradigm to address the von Neumann bottleneck (VNB) in data- The various IMC and Near Memory Computation (NMC)
intensive applications. This research proposes a 10T SRAM-based architectures have been reported in the [5]–[7]. In [4] ALU
IMC architecture that is both robustand energy-efficient. The
write margin and read margin of the proposed 10T SRAM are unit has been kept near the storage unit to design an NMC
both increased by 40% and 2.5%, respectively, over the 9T SRAM architecture with wider bandwidth for minimizing energy con-
cell. The proposed 10T SRAM has write energy and leakage sumption. Most of the design for the IMC-based implemented
power reduction of 89% and 96.6%, respectively while maintain- system usually uses 6T SRAM cells [5], [6]. In work, [5], an
ing a similar read enery as compared to 9T SRAM. Additionally, addressable content memory and Boolean logic operation have
a 4 Kb SRAM array based on 10T SRAM is implemented in 180-
nm SCL technology to analyze the suggested IMC architecture. been presented by using a 6T SRAM cell. The classification
At 1.8 V, 60 MHz, the suggested IMC architecture achieves energy of machine learning in IMC has been implemented using a
efficiency of 0.43 TOPS/W for 1-bit logic and 0.41TOPS/W for convolutions (conv) 6T SRAM memory array in [7]. The local
1-bit addition. The area efficiency of 65.2% for a 136 32 array grouped SRAM has been presented for arithmetic and logic
is achieved. operation in the IMC system [8]. The noise margin degrades in
Index Terms—SRAM, Von-Neumann architecture (VNA), In-
Memory Computing (IMC), energy-efficiency
convolution (conv) 6T SRAM cell because it contains a single
path for both read-write operations and is further engaged to
create read disturbance during the IMC system.
I. I NTRODUCTION The 8T SRAM has been implemented for performing the
The conventional Von-Neumann-based architecture (VNA) logic operation for IMC based system [9]. The 8T SRAM has
[1] contains a separate processing unit and memory unit as been designed using a different path for both read and write
shown in fig. 1(a). The separate unit for processing and storage operation, which improves the read noise margin. The author
consumes a large amount of energy for transferring data in [10] has proposed the 8T SRAM for memory computing
between these two different units. For the prevalence of big with Boolean logic operation. The ternary address content
data applications like artificial intelligence and neuromorphic memory has been presented in [11] with left, and right shift
computing, a large amount of energy is required and a large operations as well as the storage function with a configurable
amount of latency is also generated for transferring the data 8T SRAM cell.
between the processing unit and memory unit in VNA [2]. Re- The author in [10] presented the 9T SRAM cell for the
cent computing systems used In-Memory Computation (IMC) computation in memory which performed the logic operation.
[3], [4] based architecture in which data is processed inside the The author in [12] has been implemented the 9T SRAM cell
storage unit, as shown in fig. 1(b). The IMC-based architecture for the logic operation of computation in memory. The author
contains an integrated computational unit (arithmetic logic in [13] has been presented the convolution (conv) SRAM for
unit) along with storage unit (memory) which required less a machine learning-based dot product system. Although the
energy consumption for the computing system. read static margin is improved via a different path of read and
write operating modes in the 8T, 9T, and 10T SRAM cells but
the read static and write static margins must still beincreased
in addition to the energy efficiency of the SRAM cell.
In this work, an energy-efficient and robust 10T SRAM cell
is proposes. Further, IMC architecture based on proposed 10T
is implemented to perform in memory logic operation and near
memory arithmetic operations.
The paperis organized as follows: Section II examines
the context and related work. Section III concentrates on
a summary of the proposed 10T SRAM bit-cell for IMC
architecture. The IMC-based architecture’s design specifica-
Figure 1: (a) Von-Neumann architecture (b) IMC architecture. tions are presented in Section IV. An overview of the various
(a) (b)
Memory
RWL RWLB WWL RBL RBLB WLB Gc1 Vgnd
Operation Figure 4: Proposed 10T SRAM array, as well as the storage
Read VDD VDD GND Pre Pre VDD VDD GND node of the row and column half select cells during the write
Write
”1” operation
GND GND VDD VDD VDD GND VDD VDD
0
Write
GND GND VDD VDD VDD VDD GND VDD
1
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(a) (b)
Figure 6: a) Block diagram of the proposed IMC architecture based on a 10T SRAM (b)Proposed IMC architecture layout
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For SA1, the positive terminal is connected to the RBL, and
the negative terminal is connected to the reference voltage
(Vref). For the second SA2, the RBLB is used on the SA’s
negative end, while Vref is used on the SA’s positive end. The
Vref signal generator is used to produce a 1.65 V reference
voltage (fig. 7) [15].
Figure 8: IMC waveform for (a) Read 0 (b) logic 00 (b) logic
01/10 (b) logic 11
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Table II: Comparison of various SRAM with proposed SRAM
cell
Figure 12: Distribution plot for RSNM/HSNM Read Energy (fJ) 190.5 190.56 192.5
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Table III: Comparison of various IMC based architecture architecture is performed for arithmetic and logic operation.
This
The proposed IMC architecture reduces the normalize energy
TCAC18 [10] JSSC19 [13] JSSC20 [5] TC20 [8]
Work
for Boolean logic by 3.09%, 6% with respect to recently
Local reported 9T SRAM and 8T SRAM cell, respectively. A 0.41
SRAM 9T 10T 8T 10T
grouped 6T TOPS energy consumption is found for arithmetic operation
Process 45nm 65nm 28nm 28nm 180nm in the proposed IMC architecture. The proposed 10T SRAM
Array Size NA 256x64 128x256 32x256 136x32 bit-cell can be significant option for In-Memory Computing.
Supply 1.1 1 1 1.1 1.8
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