Programmable magnetologic full adder

Abstract

Logic performed with magnetic materials is expected to offer decisive advantages compared to transistor-based logic. Recently, we introduced a new concept to employ a single magnetoresistive element – the basic building block of magnetic random access memory (MRAM) – as a programmable logic gate where each of the four distinct initial states corresponds to one of the four elementary logic functions (N)AND and (N)OR. Utilizing the two key-properties inherent in magnetoresistive elements, namely the non-volatility of information and the programmability at run-time, we present here an efficient magnetologic design of a full adder, the most widely used logic block in computing. According to our estimates, it is competitive in speed even with the fastest transistor-based full adders proposed in the literature and superior with respect to power and area consumption.