IRAM Design for Multimedia Applications

Bum-Sik Kim, Yun Ho Choi , and Lee-Sup Kim Korea Advance Institute of Science and Technology E-mail:[email protected] *SAMSUNG Electronics Co., LTD. E-mail:[email protected] Abstract There are strong demands for high speed and low power to realize systems on silicon. However, the current circuit design technologies for MPU and DRAM are based on their own optimized process technologies. It is necessary modify the circuit design technology for embedded memory logic after reviewing process technologies of MPU and DRAM. In this paper, we propose the modi ed design concept for IRAM for multimedia applications. After scrutinizing an example of multimedia applications, we propose a new IRAM architecture for multimedia applications. We are currently designing IRAM system which executes DCT of MP@ML in MPEG2 at 72.6MHz with 0.35 m CMOS EML (Embedded Memory and Logic) process with 4-metal layers. Also, we propose that the DRAM block should be divided as many blocks as possible to prevent DRAM block from being the bottleneck of the system performance. In addition, we propose that by using the new EML process technology, the DRAM circuits must be modi ed to use wide address buses and data buses.