We describe the design of ECL write circuits and a CMOS memory cell in an ECL-CMOS SRAM to achieve ultra-fast cycle time. Factors determining the write cycle are reduced by several novel circuit techniques and by optimizing the design of the write circuits and CMOS memory cell, thereby, enabling ultra-fast cycle time. Key techniques are a bit line overdriving, the use of an overshoot suppressing emitter follower and a WPG with a replica memory cell delayer. The 72-kb ECL-CMOS SRAM macro through which these techniques were implemented was fabricated using 0. 3-µm BiCMOS technology. The RAM macro achieves a short cycle time of 2 ns without sacrificing stable memory cell operation. These techniques thus provide SRAMs with a shorter cycle time in the cache memories of high performance computer systems.

This paper presents Super-CMOS SRAM process technology that integrates bipolar and CMOS transistors in a chip while adding only one ion implantation step and no lithography mask steps to the conventional CMOS SRAM process. The Super-CMOS SRAM process therefore has the same process cost as the CMOS SRAMs, while it achieves higher access speeds. In order to demonstrate the Super-CMOS SRAM, we have developed a 3.3 V/5 V 256 kb SRAM using 0.4 µm Super-CMOS process technology. By applying bipolar transistors to the sense amplifier circuits, a high-speed access time of 5.8 ns with a 3.0 V power supply is successfully achieved.