REFRESH CONTROLLER FOR FIRST-IN FIRST-OUT MEMORIES

A method of operating a first-in-first-out memory, called a FIFO, includes performing write and read operations of data with a FIFO. The FIFO has a size fifo_size and a maximum retention time. Once a datum is written to the FIFO, there is a limit of fifo_size-1 write operations before the datum becomes invalid and there is a limit of fifo_size-1 read operations before the datum is read, and the data is refreshed before reaching the maximum retention time. During the refreshing, the FIFO is available for further write and read operations.