Run-Time Reconfigurable Array Using Magnetic RAM

This paper presents the implementation of a coarse-grained magnetic RAM based reconfigurable array. The reconfigurable array architecture is organized as a one-dimensional array of programmable ALU, with the configuration bits stored in magnetic random-access memories. The use of MRAM technology to implement run-time reconfigurable hardware devices is a very promising technological solution because MRAM can provide non-volatility with cell areas and access speeds comparable to those of SRAM, and with lower process complexity than flash memory. This type of coarse-grained array, where each reconfigurable element computes on 4-bit or larger input words, is more suitable to execute data-oriented algorithms and is more able to exploit larger amounts of operation-level parallelism than common fine-grained architectures. By substantially reducing the overhead for configurability, this coarse-grain architecture is also more apt to efficiently exploit run-time reconfiguration and therefore to take advantage of multi-context MRAM-based configuration memories.