Write Termination circuits for RRAM : A Holistic Approach From Technology to Application Considerations

Alexandre Levisse (1) , Marc Bocquet (2) , Marco Rios (1) , Mouhamad Alayan (2) , Mathieu Moreau (2) , Etienne Nowak (3) , Gabriel Molas (3) , Elisa Vianello (3) , David Atienza (1) , Jean-Michel Portal (2)

1 EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
2 IM2NP - Institut des Matériaux, de Microélectronique et des Nanosciences de Provence
3 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information

While Resistive Random Access Memories (RRAM) are perceived nowadays as a promising solution for the future of computing, these technologies suffer from intrinsic variability regarding programming voltage, switching speed and achieved resistance values. Write Termination (WT) circuits are a potential solution to solve these issues. However, previously reported WT circuits do not demonstrate sufficient reliability. In this work, we propose an industrially-ready WT circuit that was simulated with a RRAM model calibrated on real measurements. We perform extensive CMOS and RRAM variability simulations to extract the actual performances of the proposed WT circuit. Finally, we simulate the effects of the proposed WT circuit with memory traces extracted from real Edge-level data-intensive applications. Overall, we demonstrate 2× to 40× of energy gains at bit level. Moreover, we show from 1.9× to 16.2× energy gains with real applications running depending on the application memory access pattern thanks to the proposed WT circuit.

Mots clés: RRAM; embedded memories; write termination; memory modeling; low-power design

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Alexandre Levisse, Marc Bocquet, Marco Rios, Mouhamad Alayan, Mathieu Moreau, et al.. Write Termination circuits for RRAM : A Holistic Approach From Technology to Application Considerations. IEEE Access, 2020, pp.109297-109308. ⟨10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3000867⟩. ⟨hal-02863232⟩