spin transfer torque
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2022 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Sheel Sindhu Manohar ◽  
Sparsh Mittal ◽  
Hemangee K. Kapoor

In the deep sub-micron region, “spin-transfer torque RAM” (STT-RAM ) suffers from “read-disturbance error” (RDE) , whereby a read operation disturbs the stored data. Mitigation of RDE requires restore operations, which imposes latency and energy penalties. Hence, RDE presents a crucial threat to the scaling of STT-RAM. In this paper, we offer three techniques to reduce the restore overhead. First, we avoid the restore operations for those reads, where the block will get updated at a higher level cache in the near future. Second, we identify read-intensive blocks using a lightweight mechanism and then migrate these blocks to a small SRAM buffer. On a future read to these blocks, the restore operation is avoided. Third, for data blocks having zero value, a write operation is avoided, and only a flag is set. Based on this flag, both read and restore operations to this block are avoided. We combine these three techniques to design our final policy, named CORIDOR. Compared to a baseline policy, which performs restore operation after each read, CORIDOR achieves a 31.6% reduction in total energy and brings the relative CPI (cycle-per-instruction) to 0.64×. By contrast, an ideal RDE-free STT-RAM saves 42.7% energy and brings the relative CPI to 0.62×. Thus, our CORIDOR policy achieves nearly the same performance as an ideal RDE-free STT-RAM cache. Also, it reaches three-fourths of the energy-saving achieved by the ideal RDE-free cache. We also compare CORIDOR with four previous techniques and show that CORIDOR provides higher restore energy savings than these techniques.


2022 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Kazi Asifuzzaman ◽  
Rommel Sánchez Verdejo ◽  
Petar Radojković

It is questionable whether DRAM will continue to scale and will meet the needs of next-generation systems. Therefore, significant effort is invested in research and development of novel memory technologies. One of the candidates for next-generation memory is Spin-Transfer Torque Magnetic Random Access Memory (STT-MRAM). STT-MRAM is an emerging non-volatile memory with a lot of potential that could be exploited for various requirements of different computing systems. Being a novel technology, STT-MRAM devices are already approaching DRAM in terms of capacity, frequency, and device size. Although STT-MRAM technology got significant attention of various major memory manufacturers, academic research of STT-MRAM main memory remains marginal. This is mainly due to the unavailability of publicly available detailed timing and current parameters of this novel technology, which are required to perform a reliable main memory simulation on performance and power estimation. This study demonstrates an approach to perform a cycle accurate simulation of STT-MRAM main memory, being the first to release detailed timing and current parameters of this technology from academia—essentially enabling researchers to conduct reliable system-level simulation of STT-MRAM using widely accepted existing simulation infrastructure. The results show a fairly narrow overall performance deviation in response to significant variations in key timing parameters, and the power consumption experiments identify the key power component that is mostly affected with STT-MRAM.


2022 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Tommaso Marinelli ◽  
Jignacio Gómez Pérez ◽  
Christian Tenllado ◽  
Manu Komalan ◽  
Mohit Gupta ◽  
...  

As the technology scaling advances, limitations of traditional memories in terms of density and energy become more evident. Modern caches occupy a large part of a CPU physical size and high static leakage poses a limit to the overall efficiency of the systems, including IoT/edge devices. Several alternatives to CMOS SRAM memories have been studied during the past few decades, some of which already represent a viable replacement for different levels of the cache hierarchy. One of the most promising technologies is the spin-transfer torque magnetic RAM (STT-MRAM), due to its small basic cell design, almost absent static current and non-volatility as an added value. However, nothing comes for free, and designers will have to deal with other limitations, such as the higher latencies and dynamic energy consumption for write operations compared to reads. The goal of this work is to explore several microarchitectural parameters that may overcome some of those drawbacks when using STT-MRAM as last-level cache (LLC) in embedded devices. Such parameters include: number of cache banks, number of miss status handling registers (MSHRs) and write buffer entries, presence of hardware prefetchers. We show that an effective tuning of those parameters may virtually remove any performance loss while saving more than 60% of the LLC energy on average. The analysis is then extended comparing the energy results from calibrated technology models with data obtained with freely available tools, highlighting the importance of using accurate models for architectural exploration.


Electronics ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 240
Author(s):  
Beomjun Kim ◽  
Yongtae Kim ◽  
Prashant Nair ◽  
Seokin Hong

STT-RAM (Spin-Transfer Torque Random Access Memory) appears to be a viable alternative to SRAM-based on-chip caches. Due to its high density and low leakage power, STT-RAM can be used to build massive capacity last-level caches (LLC). Unfortunately, STT-RAM has a much longer write latency and a much greater write energy than SRAM. Researchers developed hybrid caches made up of SRAM and STT-RAM regions to cope with these challenges. In order to store as many write-intensive blocks in the SRAM region as possible in hybrid caches, an intelligent block placement policy is essential. This paper proposes an adaptive block placement framework for hybrid caches that incorporates metadata embedding (ADAM). When a cache block is evicted from the LLC, ADAM embeds metadata (i.e., write intensity) into the block. Metadata embedded in the cache block are then extracted and used to determine the block’s write intensity when it is fetched from main memory. Our research demonstrates that ADAM can enhance performance by 26% (on average) when compared to a baseline block placement scheme.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jong-Ung Baek ◽  
Jin-Young Choi ◽  
Dong Won Kim ◽  
Ji-Chan Kim ◽  
Han-Sol Jun ◽  
...  

Unlike conventional neuromorphic chips fabricated with C-MOSFETs and capacitors, those utilizing p-STT MTJ neuron devices can achieve fast switching (on the order of several tens of nanoseconds) and extremely low...


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Esteban Garzón ◽  
Adam Teman ◽  
Marco Lanuzza

The ever-growing interest in cryogenic applications has prompted the investigation for energy-efficient and high-density memory technologies that are able to operate efficiently at extremely low temperatures. This work analyzes three appealing embedded memory technologies under cooling—from room temperature (300 K) down to cryogenic levels (77 K). As the temperature goes down to 77 K, six-transistor static random-access memory (6T-SRAM) presents slight improvements for static noise margin (SNM) during hold and read operations, while suffering from lower (−16%) write SNM. Gain-cell embedded DRAM (GC-eDRAM) shows significant benefits under these conditions, with read voltage margins and data retention time improved by about 2× and 900×, respectively. Non-volatile spin-transfer torque magnetic random access memory (STT-MRAM) based on single- or double-barrier magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) exhibit higher read voltage sensing margins (36% and 48%, respectively), at the cost of longer write access time (1.45× and 2.1×, respectively). The above characteristics make the considered memory technologies to be attractive candidates not only for high-performance computing, but also enable the possibility to bridge the gap from room-temperature to the realm of cryogenic applications that operate down to liquid helium temperatures and below.


Author(s):  
Fangcen Zhong ◽  
Masanori NATSUI ◽  
Takahiro Hanyu

Abstract Nonvolatile large-scale integrated circuits (NV-LSIs) with a power-gating (PG) technique can drastically reduce the wasted static power consumption, which is an attractive feature in Internet-of-Things (IoT) edge devices. However, the issues of inrush current and voltage fluctuation due to PG-state transitions are preventing their advancement. This paper describes a technique for stabilizing the operation of NV-LSIs during PG by minimizing inrush current effects and voltage fluctuations. In the proposed technique, several PG switch configurations are prepared and one of them are dynamically selected in accordance with the expected operation conditions, which could minimize inrush current and voltage fluctuations in the power supply. This technique is applied to sub-array-level PG of a spin-transfer torque magneto-resistive random-access memory (STT-MRAM). As a result, inrush current level and the recovery time of the power supply from a sleep state are reduced by up to 83.8% and 68.7%, respectively, while satisfying given performance requirements.


ACS Nano ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ke Pei ◽  
Shanshan Liu ◽  
Liting Yang ◽  
Enze Zhang ◽  
Ruixuan Zhang ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shima Hosseinzadeh ◽  
Mehrdad Biglari ◽  
Dietmar Fey

Non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies offer a number of advantages over conventional memory technologies such as SRAM and DRAM. These include a smaller area requirement, a lower energy requirement for reading and partly for writing, too, and, of course, the non-volatility and especially the qualitative advantage of multi-bit capability. It is expected that memristors based on resistive random access memories (ReRAMs), phase-change memories, or spin-transfer torque random access memories will replace conventional memory technologies in certain areas or complement them in hybrid solutions. To support the design of systems that use NVMs, there is still research to be done on the modeling side of NVMs. In this paper, we focus on multi-bit ternary memories in particular. Ternary NVMs allow the implementation of extremely memory-efficient ternary weights in neural networks, which have sufficiently high accuracy in interference, or they are part of carry-free fast ternary adders. Furthermore, we lay a focus on the technology side of memristive ReRAMs. In this paper, a novel memory model in the circuit level is presented to support the design of systems that profit from ternary data representations. This model considers two read methods of ternary ReRAMs, namely, serial read and parallel read. They are extensively studied and compared in this work, as well as the write-verification method that is often used in NVMs to reduce the device stress and to increase the endurance. In addition, a comprehensive tool for the ternary model was developed, which is capable of performing energy, performance, and area estimation for a given setup. In this work, three case studies were conducted, namely, area cost per trit, excessive parameter selection for the write-verification method, and the assessment of pulse width variation and their energy latency trade-off for the write-verification method in ReRAM.


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