Dynamic voltage scaling for SEU-tolerance in low-power memories

Reliability issues are increasingly problematic as technology scales down and the supply voltage is lowered. Specifically, the Soft-Error Rate (SER) increases due to the reduced feature size and the reduced charge. This paper describes an adaptive method to lower memory power using a dual Vdd in a column-based Vdd memory with Built-in Current Sensors (BICS). Using our method, we reduce the memory power by about 40% and increase the error immunity of the memory without the significant power overhead as in previous methods.