Compact and Low Power 11T-2MTJ Non-Volatile Ternary Content Addressable Memory Cell with High Sense Margin

Ternary content addressable memories (TCAMs) are used extensively in applications requiring high search speed. Conventional MOS based TCAMs suffer from static power consumption and large area overhead due to separate storage and comparison circuits. Recently many non-volatile TCAMs have been proposed to overcome these issues. Many of these NV-TCAMs which occupy lesser area suffer from low reliability due to small sense margin. Some reliable cells have recently been proposed but these cells incur area overhead. We propose an 11T-2MTJ TCAM cell that occupies 19.1% and 5.6% lesser area than existing cells while providing reliable search operations and consuming low search energy. The proposed cell also shows better optimization of search energy per bit and search delay at scaled supply voltages. We compare the proposed cell with the previously reported cells by performing HSPICE simulations using a Verilog-A compact model of magnetic tunnel junction.