Architecture Design with STT-RAM: Opportunities and Challenges

The emerging spin-transfer torque magnetic random-access memory (STT-RAM) has attracted a lot of interest from both academia and industry in recent years. It has been considered as a promising replacement of SRAM and DRAM in the cache and memory system design thanks to many advantages, including non-volatility, low leakage power, SRAM comparable read performance and read energy consumption, higher density than SRAM, better scalability than conventional CMOS technologies, and good CMOS compatibility. However, the disadvantages of STT-RAM, such as higher write energy and longer write latency than SRAM, also bring design challenges. This paper introduces state-of-the-art architectural approaches to adopt STT-RAM in the cache and memory system design by taking advantage of the opportunities brought by STT-RAM as well as overcoming the challenges.