A HIGH-PERFORMANCE RECONFIGURABLE LINE MEMORY MACROCELL FOR VIDEO SIGNAL-PROCESSING ASICS

This paper describes a high-performance reconfigurable line memory macrocell for video signal processing ASICs. The macrocell features a three-transistor memory cell array with a divided word line structure for write word lines. The transistor size of the memory cell has been determined by analyzing access time to achieve a more than 50 MHz through-put rate for various aspect ratios. A testing circuit has been embedded in the macrocell, which offers the video-rate testing and high fault coverage with a minimum circuit count. Moreover the macrocell has high reconfigurability of word-length, bit-width and aspect ratio. A 1152 words x 8 bits line memory has been implemented experimentally using 1.0-mu-m CMOS technology. As a result, 60 MHz operation has been observed, allowing real time processing of HDTV signal. By applying the macrocells to HDTV system LSIs, the reconfigurability and usefulness of the testing circuits have been verified.