Toshiba Develops Low-Power Technology For Embedded SRAM For Smartphones

Toshiba has announced a new breakthrough that has to do with embedded hardware for the smartphone and mobile product market. Toshiba has announced the development of a new low-power technology for embedded SRAM. The new technology promises to extend the battery life for smartphones and other devices.

Toshiba says that the new technology is able to reduce active and standby power in temperatures ranging from room temperature to high temperatures using a bit line power calculator and a digitally controllable retention circuit. Toshiba has been able to prototype the new system and confirm significant active and standby power consumption reductions.

At 25°C, the new technology is able to reduce active power consumption by 27% and standby power consumption by 85%. Toshiba has been presenting its new technology at the 2013 International Solid-State Circuit Conference in San Francisco. The company points out that increasing battery life requires lower power consumption in both high performance and low performance modes.

Toshiba says low performance applications require only tens of megahertz to operate and SRAM temperatures remain around room temperature where active and leakage power consumption are comparable. Toshiba says that fact makes reducing active and standby power consumption from room temperature to high temperatures important. The new technology uses the bit line power calculator and the digitally controllable retention circuit together with the BLPC able to predict power consumption of bit lines using replicated bit lines to monitor the frequency of the ring oscillator. The DCRC decreases standby power in the retention circuit by periodically activating itself to update the size of the buffer of the retention driver.

[via Toshiba]