Emerging Non-volatile Memory Technologies Exploration Flow for Processor Architecture

Most die area of today´s systems-on-chips is occupied by memories. Hence, a significant proportion of total power is spent on memory systems. Moreover, since processing elements have to be fed with instructions and data from memories, memory plays a key role for system´s performance. As a result, memories are a critical part of future embedded systems. Continuing CMOS scaling leads to manufacturing constraints and power consumption issues for the current three main memory technologies, i.e. SRAM, DRAM and FLASH, which compromises further evolution in upcoming technology node. To face these challenges, new non-volatile memory technologies emerged in recent years. Among these technologies, magnetic RAM (MRAM) is a promising candidate to replace existing memories since it combines non-volatility, high scalability, high density, low latency, and low leakage. This paper describes an evaluation flow to explore next generation of the memory hierarchy of processor-based systems using new non-volatile memory technologies.