Patent 7391667 was granted and assigned to Renesas Technology Corp on June, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An apparatus is to reduce, during the standby time, the electric power caused by the leakage current flowing through a storage transistor in a 3-transistor dynamic cell. Source electrodes of storage transistors in a plurality of 3-transistor dynamic cells constituting a memory array are connected, and a switch is provided between the source electrode and a power supply terminal. The leakage current during the standby time is interrupted by bringing the switch into a conducting state during the active time, and by bringing the switch into a nonconducting state during the standby time.