Case study on memristor-based multilevel memories

摘要

In this work, the benefits of memristor-based multilevel memories are described along with their design problems. Starting with measurements of discrete actual devices, a discrete memristor-based multilevel memory is developed. It uses a printed circuit board in order to connect eight packaged memristors from Bio Inspired to test a ternary arithmetic logic unit on a field programmable gate array. These circuits are then integrated in the second proposed memory system based on a 150-nm CMOS process that can be equipped with memristors on top of the metal layers. This integrated solution includes proper read-out, erase, and write circuits to control real memristors and 32x32 memristive memory cells. It is compared with a common static random-access memory in terms of area, computation speed, and power consumption showing benefits for memory sizes bigger than 70 words. Because yield and device variations are still a big issue in memristor fabrication, methods to counter these problems are also proposed in the end. An actual implementation should offer several trimming solutions to ensure proper functionality of a prototype memory as well as a power-on calibration, until these problems are solved. The development of the presented memories is not only based on different models but also based on measurements done with real devices. Copyright (c) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.