Spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive content addressable memory (CAM) cell structure design with enhanced search noise margin

This paper presents a new memory cell structure for content addressable memory (CAM) based on magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ). Each CAM cell uses a pair of differential MTJs as basic storage element and incorporates transistors to greatly improve the cell search noise margin at low sensing current. Using the same design principle, we further develop an area-efficient cell structure for ternary CAM (TCAM), which occupies about 25% less area compared with directly using two CAM cells to form one TCAM cell. The effectiveness of the proposed CAM and TCAM cell structures has been demonstrated by circuit simulation at 0.18 mum CMOS technology.