A hybrid magnetic/complementary metal oxide semiconductor process design kit for the design of low-power non-volatile logic circuits

摘要

Since the advent of the MOS transistor, the performance of microelectronic circuits has followed Moore's law, stating that their speed and density would double every 18 months. Today, this trend tends to get out of breath: the continuously decreasing size of devices and increasing operation frequency result in power consumption and heating issues. Among the solutions investigated to circumvent these limitations, the use of non-volatile devices appears particularly promising. It allows easing, for example, the power gating technique, which consists in cutting-off the power supply of inactive blocks without losing information, drastically reducing the standby power consumption. In this approach, the advantages of magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) compared with other non-volatile devices allow one to design hybrid CMOS/magnetic circuits with high performance and new functionalities. Designing such circuits requires integrating MTJs in standard microelectronics design suites. This is performed by means of a process design kit (PDK) for the hybrid CMOS/magnetic technology. We present here a full magnetic PDK, which contains a compact model of the MTJ for electrical simulation, technology files for layout and physical verifications, and standard cells for the design of complex logic circuits and which is compatible with standard design suites. This PDK allows designers to accurately and comfortably design high-performance hybrid CMOS/magnetic logic circuits in the same way as standard CMOS circuits.