Toggle SOT-MRAM Architecture With Self-Terminating Write Operation

Abstract

[EN]Toggle spin-orbit torque (SOT)-driven magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) with perpendicular anisotropy has a simple material stack and is more robust than directional SOT-MRAM. However, a read-before-write operation is required to use the toggle SOT-MRAM for directional switching, which threatens to increase the write delay. To resolve these issues, we propose a high-speed memory architecture for toggle SOT-MRAM that includes a minimum-sized bit cell and a custom read-write driver. The proposed driver induces an analog self-terminating SOT current that functions via an analog feedback mechanism that can read and write the toggle SOT-MRAM bit cell within a single clock cycle. As the read and write operations are completed within 570 ps, this memory architecture provides the first viable solution for nonvolatile L3 cache.