A Radiation-Hardened Non-Volatile Magnetic Latch with High Reliability and Persistent Storage

Abstract

With technology scaling down, the vulnerability of circuits to radiation and the increase of static power have become severe concerns. Spintronic devices such as magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) have been developed to cope with many concerns, among which reliability concerns [1]. Spintronic devices have attractive properties, such as non-volatility and compatibility with conventional CMOS fabrication process. Based on an advanced triple-path dual-interlocked-storage-cell (TPDICE) and MTJs, this paper proposes a radiation-hardened non-volatile magnetic latch, namely M-TPDICE, that can completely tolerate single-node upsets (SNUs) and double-node upsets (DNUs). Simulations of the proposed latch with the HSPICE tool with a 45 nm CMOS technology model have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed latch.

Nonvolatile Latch Designs With Node-Upset Tolerance and Recovery Using Magnetic Tunnel Junctions and CMOS

“…7. We propose a similar module in our previous work [24]; however, it requires the latch to be adjusted so as to achieve non-volatility. To make the module universal, we propose a new module and Fig.…”

“…The previous version of this paper was published by the 31st IEEE Asian Test Symposium (ATS 2022) [24]. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61974001, 62274052 and 62174001, the Open Project of the State Key Laboratory of Computing Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant CARCHA202101, the NSFC-JSPS Exchange Program under Grant 62111540164, the Outstanding Young Talent Support Program Key Project of Anhui Provincial Universities under Grant gxyqZD2022005, and the Distinguished Young Scholar Fund of Anhui Province under Grant 2022AH020014.…”

“…It is also noteworthy that the resistance of an MTJ in the P state is lower than that in the AP state. Note that, in our previous work [24], a non-volatile magnetic latch, namely M-TPDICE, has been proposed. In M-TPDICE, the backup channel was controlled by the clock (CLK) signal, necessitating backup at every clock cycle, which is impractical.…”

“…In M-TPDICE, the backup channel was controlled by the clock (CLK) signal, necessitating backup at every clock cycle, which is impractical. Moreover, we have proposed a backup and restore module in our previous work [24]; however, it requires the latch to be adjusted so as to achieve non-volatility.…”