Power Performance of IGZO-DRAM Memory

C-axis aligned crystal In-Ga-Zn-oxide (CAAC-IGZO) is a novel crystal morphology discovered by Semiconductor Energy Laboratory which is different from other single-crystal, poly-crystalline and amorphous morphologies. It is neither single-crystal or amorphous with no clear distinct grain boundary making this material viable candidate for thin film transistor. One particular property of interest is its high current-on to current-off ratio which enables extremely low power consumption and can be implemented as a virtual non-volatile memory for emerging memory technologies. In this thesis we work on a design strategy to replace SRAM with the IGZO 1T1C DRAM memory cell as last-level on-chip cache for microprocessors and study both the circuit level simulation and power performance at the system level.