A 90nm Phase Change Memory Technology for Stand-Alone Non-Volatile Memory Applications

Pellizzer, F.; Benvenuti, A.; Gleixner, B.; Kim, Y.; Johnson, Bob; Magistretti, M.; Marangon, T.; Pirovano, A.; Bez, R.; Atwood, G.

doi:10.1109/vlsit.2006.1705247

Cited by 121 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Instead of representing information as the presence or absence of electrical charge, PCM encodes bits in different physical states of a chalcogenide material [2,3,4,10,14,18,20,23]. Through the application of different programming currents, the phase of the material can be melted and then re-solidified into either a crystalline or amorphous state, each with a distinct electrical resistance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use ECP, not ECC, for hard failures in resistive memories

Schechter

Loh

Strauß

et al. 2010

Proceedings of the 37th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

284

211

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As leakage and other charge storage limitations begin to impair the scalability of DRAM, non-volatile resistive memories are being developed as a potential replacement. Unfortunately, current error-correction techniques are poorly suited to this emerging class of memory technologies. Unlike DRAM, PCM and other resistive memories have wear lifetimes, measured in writes, that are sufficiently short to make cell failures common during a system's lifetime. However, resistive memories are much less susceptible to transient faults than DRAM. The Hamming-based ECC codes used in DRAM are designed to handle transient faults with no effective lifetime limits, but ECC codes applied to resistive memories would wear out faster than the cells they are designed to repair. This paper proposes Error-Correcting Pointers (ECP), a new approach to error correction optimized for memories in which errors are the result of permanent cell failures that occur, and are immediately detectable, at write time. ECP corrects errors by permanently encoding the locations of failed cells into a table and assigning cells to replace them. ECP provides longer lifetimes than previously proposed solutions with equivalent overhead. Furthermore, as the variance in cell lifetimes increases -a likely consequence of further process scaling -ECP's margin of improvement over existing schemes also increases.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use ECP, not ECC, for hard failures in resistive memories

Schechter

Loh

Strauß

et al. 2010

Proceedings of the 37th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

284

211

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…1. Schematic drawings of PCRAMs, (a) Bottom contact [27], (b) Edge contact [28], (c) Wire type [29], (d) Micro-trench type [30,31].…”

Section: Pcrammentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Fig. 1 (d), schematic drawing of Micro-trench PCRAM structure is shown [30,31]. In Micro-trench structure, bottom electrodes are made of very thin side walls of a box, thus the contact area to chalcogenide material can be made smaller than the lithography limit.…”

Section: Pcrammentioning

confidence: 99%

Overview of emerging semiconductor non-volatile memories

Fujisaki

2012

IEICE Electron. Express

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Abstract:In this article, emerging new semiconductor non-volatile memories are reviewed. We are reaching the integration limit of Flash memories and new types of memories replacing Flash have been actively proposed. Each type of memory is briefly introduced and the possibility of replacing Flash is discussed. FeRAMs, MRAMs, and PCRAMs are already in production and the physics behind the operations and reliabilities are well understood. ReRAMs are now approaching to practical use. However, the operation mechanisms of the other memories have not been understood perfectly. Therefore, it is not fruitful to compare the superiority of each technology at this moment because some innovative idea might enhance a specific technology that happened from time to time.

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“…Only a portion of the GST layer, which is located close to the GST-heater interface and is referred to as active GST, undergoes phase transition when the PCM cell is thermally stimulated. In particular, in this work we focus our attention on the Lance heater geometry (Pellizzer et al, 2006), which is essentially composed of a thin layer of GST alloy and a pillar-shaped heater, as shown in Fig. 1.…”

Section: Working Principle Of the Pcm Cellmentioning

confidence: 99%