Multi-Port 1R1W Transpose Magnetic Random Access Memory by Hierarchical Bit-Line Switching

Abstract

Emerging Magnetic Random-Access Memory (MRAM) has shown a great potential to replace Static-RAM (SRAM) and Dynamic-RAM (DRAM) in the working memories including Cache and main memory. MRAM benefits from its high-density, fast speed, low standby power, and non-volatility, which provides the possibility to accelerate the computation. In this paper, we present a transpose MRAM (T-MRAM) based on the current MRAM family (Spin-Transfer Torque or STT, Spin-Orbit Torque or SOT, -MRAM) to support read/write operations both in vertical and horizontal dimensions. More importantly, a multi-port 1-Read-1-Write (1R1W) scheme is developed for the proposed T-SOT-MRAM. Thanks to the ultra-fast speed and high power-efficiency, the proposed T-SOT-MRAM can be used to accelerate the computation of Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs) and video coding. The functional validation is performed under a hybrid CMOS/MRAM simulation. According to the evaluation results, the proposed T-SOT-MRAM obtains 1.8× speedup and 28% energy saving of 1R1W operations, compared to the baseline. In addition, T-MRAMs consume less leakage power consumption than the other counterparts. Furthermore, the smaller cell area of the proposed T-MRAMs allows increasing the capacity in order to improve performance efficiency.

Keywords

• Transpose operation
• MRAM
• SOT-MRAM
• multi-port
• 1R1W