Reconfigurable Bit-Serial Operation Using Toggle SOT-MRAM for High-Performance Computing in Memory Architecture

Computing in memory (CIM) is a promising candidate for high throughput and energy-efficient data-driven applications, which mitigates the well-known memory bottleneck in Von Neumann architecture. In this paper, we present a reconfigurable bit-serial operation using toggle spin-orbit torque magnetic random access memory (TSOT-MRAM) to perform the computation completely in the bit-cell array instead of in a peripheral circuit. This bit-serial CIM (BSCIM) scheme achieves higher throughput and energy efficiency in CIM. First, basic Boolean logic operations are realized by utilizing the feature of TSOT device. A bit-cell array that implements the bit-serial operation is then built to provide the communication between column and row necessary for arithmetic operations, such as the carry propagation of addition and multiplication. Finally, we analyze the reliability of BSCIM scheme and demonstrate the performance advantage by performing convolution operations for 28 x 28 handwritten digit images in a BSCIM architecture. The results show that the delay and energy of BSCIM architecture are respectively reduced by 1.16-5.49 times and 1.12-1.43 times compared with the existing digital CIM architectures. Besides, its throughput and energy efficiency are also enhanced to 51.2 GOPS and 9.9 TOPS/W respectively.