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Fast identification of operating current for toggle MRAM by spiral search

Published: 13 June 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM) is a non-volatile memory which is widely studied for its high speed, high density, small cell size, and almost unlimited endurance. However, for deep-submicron process technologies, significant variation in MRAM cells' operating regions results in write failures in cells and reduces the production yield. Currently, memory designers characterize failed MRAM chips to find a suitable current level for reconfiguring their operating current, which is time-consuming. In this paper, we propose an efficient operating current search method and a built-in circuit for toggle MRAM, which can rapidly find a customized operating current for each MRAM chip. With the built-in circuit, an MRAM chip can dynamically reconfigure its operating current automatically. Production yield and product life-time thus can be increased.

References

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  • (2013)Write Current Self-Configuration Scheme for MRAM Yield ImprovementIEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems10.1109/TVLSI.2012.220713621:7(1260-1270)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2013

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  1. Fast identification of operating current for toggle MRAM by spiral search

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      DAC '10: Proceedings of the 47th Design Automation Conference
      June 2010
      1036 pages
      ISBN:9781450300025
      DOI:10.1145/1837274
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 13 June 2010

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      Author Tags

      1. BIST
      2. MRAM
      3. characterization
      4. reliability
      5. testing
      6. yield enhancement

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      • (2013)Write Current Self-Configuration Scheme for MRAM Yield ImprovementIEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems10.1109/TVLSI.2012.220713621:7(1260-1270)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2013

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