A leakage-tolerant wide-NOR dynamic logic circuit with a strong keeper

摘要

The strong keeper 401 in a wide-NOR dynamic logic circuit is disabled briefly by a gating device 404 during the evaluation phase. The pull-down transistors 105 can thus pull down the dynamic node 104 without contention with the powerful keeper 401 which would otherwise overwhelm them. A strong keeper is required to maintain the precharged node potential because a large leakage current can flow in the large number of short-channel pull-down transistors 105. The circuit may be used in a memory array or in a wide domino-NOR gate. The keeper may comprise an inverter or a sense amplifier coupled to a feedback PMOS transistor.