Design of a Compact Spin-Orbit-Torque-Based Ternary Content Addressable Memory

Abstract

This article presents the design of a novel and compact spin-orbit torque (SOT)-based ternary content addressable memory (TCAM). Experimentally validated/calibrated micromagnetic and macrospin simulations have been used to quantify various tradeoffs regarding the write operation, such as write energy, error rate, and retention time. SPICE simulations incorporating various sources of variability are used to evaluate search operations, optimize the proposed novel TCAM cell based on SOT magnetic random access memory (SOT-MRAM), and benchmark it against static random access memory (SRAM)- and FeFET-based TCAMs. We show low search error rates (SERs) (< 10−4) while considering various sources of variability for four transistors- and two magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs)-based TCAM array.