Adaptive idle timer for a memory device

Embodiments of the present invention provide for adaptively tuning the memory idle timer value in real time. Selected memory idle clock cycles are sampled to dynamically determine an optimized memory idle timer value. To optimize latency during sampling, the number of page hits (N_PH) and number of page misses (N_PM) are multiplied by weighted values W_PH and W_PM, respectively, such that the weighted function (W_PH*N_PH)-;(W_PM*N_PM) is maximized. The weight associated with a page miss (W_PM) is greater than the weight associated with a page hit (W_PH), resulting in a bigger penalty for a page miss than a page hit. The selected setting is continuously optimized.