Capacitor-less below 1V operating ZRAM chips made using bulk silicon can replace DRAM

Innovative Silicon has claimed two major breakthroughs in making its Z-RAM devices as better alternative to DRAM chips. The bit cell operating voltage has been reduced to below one volt (1V) on-par with traditional DRAM voltages and Z-RAM technology is now constructed on bulk silicon instead of expensive silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates - by using the 3D transistor structures preferred by the major DRAM manufacturers. Innovative Silicon has tested this by making a test chip manufactured by Hynix Semiconductor. Innovative Silicon says by achieving this, Z-RAM technology is the only DRAM memory replacement technology that is lower-cost than traditional DRAM at the latest sub-40nm nodes by meeting DRAM requirements such as low power consumption, low-voltage operation, and the latest Double Data Rate (DDRx) performance levels.

"We are very excited about the upgrades to our Z-RAM technology, as they tackle, head-on, the requirements of the large memory manufacturers to have the technology available on bulk silicon and with lower costs than any other DRAM technology - including conventional DRAM," said Mark-Eric Jones, president and CEO of Innovative Silicon. "Conventional DRAM has been the low cost, random-access memory technology for 40 years, but the memory industry is on the verge of transitioning to the capacitor-free Z-RAM technology."

Pierre Fazan, chairman and CTO of Innovative Silicon adds, "The Z-RAM technology now has all of the key ingredients to fully replace stand-alone DRAM. It is implemented on bulk silicon and has demonstrated cell operating voltages below 1V with no degradation to its multi-second static retention time, and delivers greater than a 1000x improvement in dynamic or 'disturb' retention time. The Z-RAM technology's operating voltage is now 50 to 75 percent lower than any other floating body or thyristor memory announced to date, and it is the only FB memory technology to cover the entire ITRS memory roadmap."

Dr. Sungjoo Hong, VP of DRAM R&D at Hynix Semiconductor, commented, "Our collaborative efforts with Innovative Silicon continue to be fruitful. The advances in power and voltage demonstrated in our 54nm test chips show that the Z-RAM technology has solved the most challenging issues we have seen with floating-body memories. These results validate that the Z-RAM technology has great potential to replace conventional DRAM over the next few memory generations."
"The DRAM market, the largest of the memory markets, is facing phenomenal challenges in migrating to future process nodes," said Jim Handy, of Objective Analysis. "Floating body technology is poised to solve some of those challenges, and now with Z-RAM on bulk substrates and running at DRAM-level voltages, Innovative Silicon is in a good position to help the industry continue to deliver cost reductions consistent with Moore's Law."

A paper jointly authored by Z-RAM licensee Hynix and Innovative Silicon which describes the "Remarkable Low Voltage Operation of Z-RAM" has been submitted to the 2010 VLSI Technology Symposium. The paper will reveal more details of the cell operating voltages. Innovative Silicon will publish more details on lower-voltage operation later in 2010.

For more information see www.z-ram.com