A Brief Compendium of On Chip Memory Highlighting the Tradeoffs Implementing SRAM, STT-RAM, or eDRAM

On chip memory or cache is an important piece of technology associated with lower energy consumption and increased system performance. The different configurations and technology types reveal many tradeoffs to be considered for optimizing a system designed for the consumer. The three main types of cache tech SRAM, STT-RAM, and eDRAM will be defined, and discussion will reveal what makes them good at their specializations. Fundamental metrics like mapping, associativity, volatile or non-volatile and MOSFETS as well as interesting designs and protocols like MESI will be detailed. By the end of this paper you should gain a deeper understanding of the pros and cons of different cache configurations and reasons behind implementing them. Keywords— Device Tech., Energy Consumption, IPC, Cache Latency, Area overhead, GB, SRAM, STT-RAM, eDRAM, Capacity, Protocol, MESI, MOSFET, MTJ, CPU, MLC, Associativity