Bio-Inspired Nonvolatile and Low-Cost Spin-Based 2-Bit Per Cell Memory

To deal with the daily increase of the power consumption and area overhead of the memory cells, in this paper a bio-inspired nonvolatile spin-based 2-bit per cell memory circuit is proposed. Multi-level memory (MLM) cells are capable of storing more than a single bit of information in a single memory cell. MLM architecture offers lower cost per unit of storage due to the higher data density, lower area per stored bit and most importantly lower power consumption. Thanks to the nonvolatile feature of the magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ), the proposed MLM memory can be powered off during the idle cycles in order to reduce the static power consumption. The simulation results even at the corners of the fabrication process indicate that the proposed MLM memory occupies up to 33.33% lower area and consumes 82.95% lower power per bit of the stored data in comparison to the previous nonvolatile spintronic memories.