A Survey of Test and Reliability Solutions for Magnetic Random Access Memories

Patrick Girard; Yuanqing Cheng; Arnaud Virazel; Weisheng Zhao; Rajendra Bishnoi; Mehdi B. Tahoori

doi:10.1109/JPROC.2020.3029600

A Survey of Test and Reliability Solutions for Magnetic Random Access Memories

Patrick Girard, Yuanqing Cheng, Arnaud Virazel, Weisheng Zhao, Rajendra Bishnoi, Mehdi B. Tahoori

Computer Engineering

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

19 Citations (Scopus)

120 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Memories occupy most of the silicon area in nowadays' system-on-chips and contribute to a significant part of system power consumption. Though widely used, nonvolatile Flash memories still suffer from several drawbacks. Magnetic random access memories (MRAMs) have the potential to mitigate most of the Flash shortcomings. Moreover, it is predicted that they could be used for DRAM and SRAM replacement. However, they are prone to manufacturing defects and runtime failures as any other type of memory. This article provides an up-to-date and practical coverage of MRAM test and reliability solutions existing in the literature. After some background on existing MRAM technologies, defectiveness and reliability issues are discussed, as well as functional fault models used for MRAM. This article is dedicated to a summarized description of existing test and reliability improvement methods developed so far for various MRAM technologies. The last part of this article gives some perspectives on this hot topic.

Original language	English
Article number	9240959
Pages (from-to)	149-169
Number of pages	21
Journal	Proceedings of the IEEE
Volume	109 (2021)
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2020.3029600
Publication status	Published - 2020

Keywords

Magnetic random access memory (MRAM)
nonvolatile memories
reliability
spintronics
test

Access to Document

10.1109/JPROC.2020.3029600

09240959Accepted author manuscript, 3.14 MB

Cite this

@article{9fc905a4ec944c05bc4f2bd4809a14f4,

title = "A Survey of Test and Reliability Solutions for Magnetic Random Access Memories",

abstract = "Memories occupy most of the silicon area in nowadays' system-on-chips and contribute to a significant part of system power consumption. Though widely used, nonvolatile Flash memories still suffer from several drawbacks. Magnetic random access memories (MRAMs) have the potential to mitigate most of the Flash shortcomings. Moreover, it is predicted that they could be used for DRAM and SRAM replacement. However, they are prone to manufacturing defects and runtime failures as any other type of memory. This article provides an up-to-date and practical coverage of MRAM test and reliability solutions existing in the literature. After some background on existing MRAM technologies, defectiveness and reliability issues are discussed, as well as functional fault models used for MRAM. This article is dedicated to a summarized description of existing test and reliability improvement methods developed so far for various MRAM technologies. The last part of this article gives some perspectives on this hot topic.",

keywords = "Magnetic random access memory (MRAM), nonvolatile memories, reliability, spintronics, test",

author = "Patrick Girard and Yuanqing Cheng and Arnaud Virazel and Weisheng Zhao and Rajendra Bishnoi and Tahoori, {Mehdi B.}",

year = "2020",

doi = "10.1109/JPROC.2020.3029600",

language = "English",

volume = "109 (2021)",

pages = "149--169",

journal = "Proceedings of the IEEE",

issn = "0018-9219",

publisher = "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)",

number = "2",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - A Survey of Test and Reliability Solutions for Magnetic Random Access Memories

AU - Girard, Patrick

AU - Cheng, Yuanqing

AU - Virazel, Arnaud

AU - Zhao, Weisheng

AU - Bishnoi, Rajendra

AU - Tahoori, Mehdi B.

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - Memories occupy most of the silicon area in nowadays' system-on-chips and contribute to a significant part of system power consumption. Though widely used, nonvolatile Flash memories still suffer from several drawbacks. Magnetic random access memories (MRAMs) have the potential to mitigate most of the Flash shortcomings. Moreover, it is predicted that they could be used for DRAM and SRAM replacement. However, they are prone to manufacturing defects and runtime failures as any other type of memory. This article provides an up-to-date and practical coverage of MRAM test and reliability solutions existing in the literature. After some background on existing MRAM technologies, defectiveness and reliability issues are discussed, as well as functional fault models used for MRAM. This article is dedicated to a summarized description of existing test and reliability improvement methods developed so far for various MRAM technologies. The last part of this article gives some perspectives on this hot topic.

AB - Memories occupy most of the silicon area in nowadays' system-on-chips and contribute to a significant part of system power consumption. Though widely used, nonvolatile Flash memories still suffer from several drawbacks. Magnetic random access memories (MRAMs) have the potential to mitigate most of the Flash shortcomings. Moreover, it is predicted that they could be used for DRAM and SRAM replacement. However, they are prone to manufacturing defects and runtime failures as any other type of memory. This article provides an up-to-date and practical coverage of MRAM test and reliability solutions existing in the literature. After some background on existing MRAM technologies, defectiveness and reliability issues are discussed, as well as functional fault models used for MRAM. This article is dedicated to a summarized description of existing test and reliability improvement methods developed so far for various MRAM technologies. The last part of this article gives some perspectives on this hot topic.

KW - Magnetic random access memory (MRAM)

KW - nonvolatile memories

KW - reliability

KW - spintronics

KW - test

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096131746&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1109/JPROC.2020.3029600

DO - 10.1109/JPROC.2020.3029600

M3 - Review article

AN - SCOPUS:85096131746

SN - 0018-9219

VL - 109 (2021)

SP - 149

EP - 169

JO - Proceedings of the IEEE

JF - Proceedings of the IEEE

IS - 2

M1 - 9240959

ER -

A Survey of Test and Reliability Solutions for Magnetic Random Access Memories

Abstract

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this