MTJ-Based NV-BCAM Design with Dual Voltage Level Control Circuitry

Non-volatile emerging technologies exploiting magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) capabilities are presented as promising alternatives to conventional Content Addressable Memories (CAMs). In this paper, an eight-transistor-two-MTJ (8T2MTJ) NV Binary CAM based on a voltage-divider configuration is proposed along with a Dual Voltage Level Control Circuitry (DVLCC) and periphery design to drive search and write control signals through the Searchline. The design was evaluated under nominal, as well as mismatch and process variation through 1000 Monte Carlo simulations for write and search delay, energy, search error rate (SER), and search stability margins. In particular, compared to state-of-the-art designs, the proposed 144-bit NV-BCAM offers lower (1.8%) SER, at the expense of a slight increase in search delay and search energy per bit. However, our design offers DVLCC which allows combined search and write operations through a single VDD supply.