A 65-nm ReRAM-Enabled Nonvolatile Processor With Time-Space Domain Adaption and Self-Write-Termination Achieving > 4\times Faster Clock Frequency and > 6\times Higher Restore Speed

• Published in: IEEE journal of solid-state circuits Vol. 52; no. 10; pp. 2769 - 2785
• Main Authors: Zhibo Wang, Yongpan Liu, Lee, Albert, Fang Su, Chieh-Pu Lo, Zhe Yuan, Jinyang Li, Chien-Chen Lin, Wei-Hao Chen, Hsiao-Yun Chiu, Wei-En Lin, Ya-Chin King, Chrong-Jung Lin, Khalili Amiri, Pedram, Kang-Lung Wang, Meng-Fan Chang, Huazhong Yang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.10.2017
• Subjects: Aerospace electronics; Computer architecture; Monitoring; nonvolatile flip-flops (nvFF); Nonvolatile memory; Nonvolatile processor (NVP); nonvolatile SRAM (nvSRAM); Random access memory; Registers; self-write termination (SWT); Time-domain analysis; time-space domain adaption
• DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2017.2724024
• ISSN: 0018-9200

With an ever-increasing demand for energy efficiency, processors with instant-on and zero leakage features are highly appreciated in energy harvesting as well as "normally off" applications. Recently, zero-standby power and fast switching nonvolatile processors (NVPs) have been proposed based on emerging nonvolatile memories (NVMs), such as ferroelectric RAM or spin-transfer-torque magnetic RAM. However, previous NVPs store all data to NVM upon every power interruption, resulting in high-energy consumption and degraded NVM endurance. This paper presents a 65-nm fully CMOS-logic-compatible ReRAM-based NVP supporting time-space domain adaption. It incorporates adaptive nonvolatile controller, nonvolatile flip-flops, and nonvolatile static random access memory (nvSRAM) with self-write termination. Data redundancy in both time and space domain is fully exploited to reduce store/restore time/energy and boost clock frequency. The NVP operates at >100 MHz and achieves 20 ns/0.45 nJ restore time/energy, realizing >6× and >6000× higher speed and energy efficiency of restore and >4× faster operating frequency compared with that of state of the art.