Enabling phase-change memory for data-centric computing: Technology, circuitand system

Emerging nonvolatile memory (NVM) technology i.e., phase-change memory (PCM) has been commonly employed as a drop-in replacement for either DRAM or Flash. However, the inherent nature of PCM technology does not align perfectly with either applications in terms of cost-per-bit, performance, power, endurance or retention. The missing killer applications for PCM have slowed down the technology development from becoming mainstream. From the systems perspective, the ever-growing big data problems call for a paradigm shift from traditional compute-centric system to data-centric system for better performance, efficiency and productivity. A data-centric system will demand new hardware features to support the efficient storage and manipulation of data in a wide range of data-intensive applications. Considering these factors, this paper will give an overview of recent research efforts to enable PCM for building a reliable and efficient ternary content addressable memory (TCAM). By leveraging multiple levels of computing stack - technology, circuit and architecture, we will show a holistic approach of tailoring PCM to meeting the new system requirements. It opens up opportunities of accelerating NVM development as the methodology can be generalized to other NVM technologies.