rFPGA: CMOS-nano hybrid FPGA using RRAM components

In this paper, novel reconfigurable architectures are introduced to utilize high-density resistive memory (RRAM) to build FPGA components. Different from the existing CMOS-nano hybrid circuits that use crossbars, the proposed rFPGA structures consist of mainly 1T1R structures (1 CMOS transistor is integrated with a two-terminal resistive nanojunction) that can be fabricated using a CMOS-compatible process. The proposed 2D architecture maintains the baseline FPGA cell designs and significantly reduces the size of memory and routing elements using 1T1R structures. The proposed 3D architecture further improves the density of the 2D version by efficiently integrating RRAM and CMOS layers in three dimensions. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed 2D and 3D FPGA structures can provide at least 2X-3X performance gains, compared to the corresponding 2D and 3D CMOS FPGA's.