Optical memory in IoT devices: an energy-efficient approach using phase change materials

Abstract

As Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices continue to grow rapidly in number, developing energy-efficient memory solutions has become critically important. This paper introduces an innovative Phase Change Memory (PCM) architecture that can significantly reduce memory energy consumption in IoT devices. After highlighting the energy-inefficiency of current memory designs, we explore the possibilities of leveraging PCM. We demonstrate that the benefits of exploiting PCM are dependent on the working frequency of the CPU and show how PCM can surpass devices with SRAM and DRAM. As a replacement candidate for FLASH, PCM can also be utilized instead of SRAM and DRAM. We also demonstrate that, based on the application, we can also save more energy. Ongoing work focuses on deployment of this application dependency and enhancing energy efficiency of devices using PCM. This represents a major advance towards realizing widespread integration of photonics and electronics in IoT hardware.