Emerging Hybrid Logic Circuits based on Non-Volatile Magnetic Memories

As the technology node shrinks down to 90 nm and below, high power becomes one of the major critical issues for CMOS high-speed computing circuits (e. g. logic and cache memory) due to the increasing leakage currents and data traffic. Emerging non-volatile memories are under intense investigation to bring the non-volatility into the logic circuits and then eliminate completely the standby power issue. Thanks to its quasi-infinite endurance, high speed and easy 3D integration at the back-end process of CMOS IC fabrication, Magnetic RAM (MRAM) is considered as one of the most promising candidates. A number of hybrid MRAM/CMOS logic circuits have been proposed and prototyped successfully in the last years. In this introduction paper for the invited special session at NEWCAS 2013, we present an overview and current status of these logic circuits and discuss their potential applications in the future.