Reconfigurable N-level memristor memory design

Memristive devices have gained significant research attention lately because of their unique properties and wide application spectrum. In particular, memristor-based resistive random access memory (RRAM) offers the high density, low power, and low volatility required for next-generation non-volatile memory. The ability to program memristive devices into several different resistance states has also led to the proposal of multilevel RRAM. This work analyzes the application of thinfilm memristors as N-level RRAM elements. The tradeoffs between the number of memory levels and each RRAM element's reliability will be discussed. A metric is proposed to rate each RRAM element in the presence of process variations. A memory architecture is also presented which allows the number of memory levels to be reconfigured based on different application characteristics. The proposed architecture can achieve a write time speedup of 5.9 over other memristor memory architectures with 80% ion mobility degradation.