Reconfigurable CMOS/STT-MTJ Non-Volatile Circuit for Logic-in-Memory Applications

The unique properties of spin-transfer torque magnetic tunnel junctions (STT-MTJs) have led to promising designs for logic and memory applications. Additionally, STT-MTJ based circuits have shown attractive potential to design efficient non-volatile logic-in-memory (NV-LIM) architectures, which assure low power and increased speed. This paper proposes a bit-level reconfigurable NV logic circuit based on hybrid CMOS/STT-MTJ design. Indeed, our circuit can adapt on-demand its structure, thus offering intrinsic flexibility to perform basic logic functions (i.e. AND/OR/XOR) by a single circuit architecture. Post-layout simulation results prove that the proposed circuit leads to increase both delay and energy consumption with respect to state-of-the-art non-reconfigurable designs. However, its reconfigurable operation capability is very attractive to reduce area occupation and to increase design flexibility of NV-LIM systems.