Design Limitations in Oxide-Based Memristive Ternary Content Addressable Memories

IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems proceedings, vol. 56, pp. 1–5

Abstract

Memristive devices offer energy and area efficient non-volatile data storage for data-intense Ternary Content Ad-dressable Memory (TCAM) architectures. However, depending on the storage implementation in the bitcell design, the matching functionality shows multiple undesired discharge effects leading to false look-up results. In particular, the ternary storage suffers during the look-up operation from a poor resistance ratio, match-line leakage and device variabilities. In this paper, we investigate the inherent, design-dependent limitations in the ternary state storage capability due to different memristive TCAM bitcell design parameters and device variabilities. We test these limits based on variability-aware device simulations and isolate crucial parameters for the optimization of memristive TCAMs.

Authors 6

1. Leon Brackmann Aachen Institute for Electronic Materials II (IWE II)

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute for Electronic Materials II, RWTH Aachen,Aachen,Germany

   Institute for Electronic Materials II, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany

2. Tobias Ziegler Aachen Institute for Electronic Materials II (IWE II)

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute for Electronic Materials II, RWTH Aachen,Aachen,Germany

   Institute for Electronic Materials II, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany

3. Atousa Jafari

   Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Karlsruhe Insitute of Technology,Department of Computer Science,Karlsruhe,Germany

   Department of Computer Science, Karlsruhe Insitute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

4. Dirk J. Wouters Aachen Institute for Electronic Materials II (IWE II)

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute for Electronic Materials II, RWTH Aachen,Aachen,Germany

   Institute for Electronic Materials II, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany

5. Mehdi Baradaran Tahoori

   Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Karlsruhe Insitute of Technology,Department of Computer Science,Karlsruhe,Germany

   Department of Computer Science, Karlsruhe Insitute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

6. Stephan Menzel

   Forschungszentrum Jülich

   Affiliation as printed

   Peter-Grünberg Institute 7, FZ Juelich,Juelich,Germany