Memorie PCM low power : analisi dei consumi e studio di circuiti ottimizzati

Phase Change Memory is a new, cutting edge technology which is expected to become one of the leading memories of the future. This thesis describes the work done to help create the first PCM going to be commercially released on the market, Imola. More in detail, main efforts here described are finalized to analyze and reduce the power consumption of by this memory. This is becoming an increasing issue to be considered; along with shrinking of the process, the leakage power is becoming a huge component of the total consumption, while in the past this contribution could be considered negligible. Therefore, precise methods to track and control current consumption are needed. Different topics about the current consumption and methods to reduce it will be discussed/evaluated: circuits to condition the clock with the aim of avoiding unnecessary clock propagation, different architectural techniques and solutions to reduce power dissipation, low consumption flip flop analysis and comparison, clock mux circuits evaluation. It will also be described in details how to make a digital analysis of a circuit consumption, along with multiple examples. In addition, it will be shown the main advantages of this study, such as the detail of the outcomes and the very small time needed to obtain the results, even for a very complex memory as Imola. In the end, it will be presented the results of this work and the quantitative power consumption saved thanks to these studies.