Title :
PS3-RAM: A fast portable and scalable statistical STT-RAM reliability analysis method
Author :
Wen, Wujie ; Zhang, Yaojun ; Chen, Yiran ; Wang, Yu ; Xie, Yuan
Author_Institution :
Univ. of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Abstract :
Process variations and thermal fluctuations significantly affect the write reliability of spin-transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM). Traditionally, modeling the impacts of these variations on STT-RAM designs requires expensive Monte-Carlo runs with hybrid magnetic-CMOS simulation steps. In this paper, we propose a fast and scalable semi-analytical simulation method - PS3-RAM, for STT-RAM write reliability analysis. Simulation results show that PS3-RAM offers excellent agreement with the conventional simulation method without running the costly macro-magnetic and SPICE simulations. Our method can accurately estimate the STT-RAM write error rate at both MTJ switching directions under different temperatures while receiving a speedup of multiple orders of magnitude (five order or more). PS3-RAM shows great potentials in the STT-RAM reliability analysis at the early design stage of memory or micro-architecture.
Keywords :
CMOS integrated circuits; Monte Carlo methods; random-access storage; reliability; statistical analysis; MTJ switching direction; Monte-Carlo method; PS3-RAM; STT-RAM design; magnetic-CMOS simulation; microarchitecture; process variation; semianalytical simulation method; spin-transfer torque random access memory; statistical STT-RAM reliability analysis; thermal fluctuation; write error rate; write reliability; Monte Carlo methods; Random access memory; Reliability; Resistance; Sensitivity analysis; Switches; Switching circuits; STT-RAM; process variation; reliability; thermal fluctuation;
Conference_Titel :
Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2012 49th ACM/EDAC/IEEE
Conference_Location :
San Francisco, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4503-1199-1
