STT-RAM designs supporting dual-port accesses

The spin-transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM) has been widely investigated as a promising candidate to replace the static random access memory (SRAM) as on-chip cache memories. However, the existing STT-RAM cell designs can be used for only single-port accesses, which limits the memory access bandwidth and constraints the system performance. In this work, we propose the design solutions to provide dual-port accesses for STT-RAM. The area increment by introducing an additional port is reduced by leveraging the shared source-line structure. Detailed analysis on the performance/reliability degradation caused by dual-port accesses and the corresponding design optimization are performed. We propose two types of dual-port STT-RAM cell structures having 2 read/write ports (2RW) or 1-read/1-write port (1R/1W), respectively. Comparison shows that a 2RW STT-RAM cell consumes only 42% of area of a dual-port SRAM. The 1R/1W design further reduces 7.7% of cell area under same performance target. © 2013 EDAA.