Design Technology co-optimization of 1D-1VCMA to improve read performance for SCM applications

Abstract

1-diode 1-Voltage controlled magnetic anisotropy (1D-1VCMA) can be an option for Storage Class Memory (SCM) to bridge the latency gap between DRAM and flash memory. It has low sneak current, high non-linearity and low IR drop. This paper presents the Design Technology Co-optimization (DTCO) study of 1D-1VCMA stack to improve the performance and energy. Thanks to precessional switching of VCMA, the write operation is very fast, but the read determines overall latency as read before write is needed to ensure reliable write operations. The read performance of 1D-1VCMA is penalized due to high VCMA MTJ resistance, hence impacting the overall performance. To improve the read performance, this paper explores two solutions: 1) reducing the VCMA RA product, and 2) improving the read circuit. These solutions improve the read performance by 36% and 260%, respectively.