Variability resilient sense amplifier with reduced energy consumption

摘要

Disclosed is an ultra low power sense amplifier circuit (SA) for amplifying a low swing input signal (”Vin) to a full swing output signal (”Vout2), with - a first amplifier stage (BIG_SA) for pre-amplifying the input signal to an intermediate signal (”Vout1) on its internal nodes, - a second amplifier stage (SMALL_SA) for amplifying the intermediate signal to the output signal (”Vout2); - a control circuit for sequentially activating the first and second amplifier (Big_SA, Small_SA). The first amplifier has a capacitor (Cs) for limiting energy consumption and two upsized PMOS transistors (M1, M2) without NMOS transistors.