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Overview

As the industry leader in performance and volume delivery, NEC Electronics has traditionally delivered embedded DRAM (eDRAM) solutions with each new generation of its standard process. This was true of the 90 nm and 55 nm nodes, and it will remain true for the 40 nm node. In this new eDRAM family as well as previous generations, our technology leadership spans many features.
Following are some of the features that make eDRAM from NEC Electronics the ideal solution for a wide variety of applications.

These characteristics have helped fuel the growing popularity of eDRAM for a variety of applications – from communications systems to home electronics, from enterprise servers to entertainment systems. NEC Electronics has shipped high volumes of ASICs with eDRAM for all of these application areas. The success complex system LSI chip for the Nintendo Wii™ and Microsoft® XBox 360™ has propelled fabrication volume to many millions of devices.

In chip after chip, ASIC designers are seeing the benefits of embedded DRAM as well as the advantages of NEC Electronics' broad experience with eDRAM applications. That experience continues to pay dividends in our latest generation. This 90 nm technology leverages process enhancements to achieve fast access times while keeping power consumption surprisingly low, making this eDRAM ideal for portable applications such as mobile phones.

• eDRAM Success Stories

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eDRAM Advantages

Embedding large blocks of DRAM into your ASIC brings many advantages. By eliminating the need to drive I/O signals to separate memory chips, eDRAM boosts memory performance and overall system bandwidth. Eliminating the I/O drivers also reduces power consumption and noise. ASIC pin counts and PCB layers decrease as well, often allowing use of a smaller, less expensive ASIC package and PCB. A smaller package and reduced component count can simplify board layouts, allowing you to shrink the size of your board.
Embedded DRAM from NEC Electronics offers all of these advantages and more, with features that cannot be matched by competitor offerings.Because our eDRAM technology is fully compatible with our standard and fully qualified CMOS process, you always get full CMOS performance and reliability. Any of your CMOS IP can coexist on the same chip with eDRAM. Integrating eDRAM requires few additional process steps, so costs are kept reasonable.

At the same time, advanced process and memory structures plus innovative materials – such as the zircon dioxide (ZrO₂) dielectric introduced at 90 nm – give NEC Electronics' eDRAM a significant performance edge over competitor offerings.

The advanced structure dramatically reduces parasitic resistance and capacitance throughout the memory array, thus minimizing both random access time and power consumption. The low parasitics also ensure high-speed operation under low operating voltage, as required for today's CMOS logic. Our 90 nm eDRAM runs at 250 MHz or higher at 0.9V (initial latency 1).

NEC Electronics Embedded DRAM Portfolio

Our eDRAM portfolio begins with high-performance options for 130, 150 nm, and 90 nm ASICs (the CB-130, CB-12, and CB-90 technologies, respectively), and continues with the state-of-the-art 55 nm and 40 nm options for industry-best operating speeds, power consumption, and integration.
For example, our 90 nm eDRAM achieves speeds of 250 MHz or higher (initial latency 1, 0.9 V, worst case), compared to competitor offerings with random access speeds no higher than about 100 MHz (initial latency 1).

Note too that our eDRAM offers significant advantages over embedded SRAM in area, power and SER.

Roadmap and Summary

NEC Electronics eDRAM delivers high performance and full CMOS compatibility. In addition to density improvements due to process shrinks, ongoing innovation in eDRAM structure and materials assures further advances in cell size reduction and performance improvement. Note that each new eDRAM generation follows the corresponding standard CMOS generation by about six months. With SRAM-like access and low-voltage operation, this eDRAM suits a wide variety of demanding SOC applications.

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