| 摘要 |
<p>An additional memory bank (214) is added to a block of regular banks (206) in a memory to reduce dynamic power consumption of the memory. The additional bank is accessed by a set of bit lines (216) that is substantially shorter than corresponding bit lines (210) extending through all of the regular memory banks. Memory read (308) and write (306) operations, which are addressed to one of the regular banks (206), are deliberately redirected to the additional bank (214) having the short bit lines (216). Tracking circuitry (220, 222) identifies the regular bank that was addressed for each location in the additional bank. Data is moved from the additional bank to a regular bank (334) only when a new write operation (306) does not match (330) the bank of the previous write operation. Dynamic power is reduced because locality of reference causes access to the additional bank (214) without having to access a regular bank (206) for most memory read and write operations.</p> |
