Full Memory Encryption with Magnetoelectric In-Memory Computing

We propose an in-memory computing architecture based on the magneto-electric random access memory (MeRAM). The unique precessional magnetism of MeRAM is utilized to carry out XOR encryption of the device state with a key, allowing for encryption without readout of the device state, thus saving a significant energy and delay over computing-in-memory architectures. Furthermore, parallel encryption of memory blocks provides additional orders of improvement in encryption time. We simulate the proposed encryption scheme using a 28nm CMOS process and a macrospin LLG MTJ model, then evaluate the energy and latency of full-memory encryption on a 512 x 512 array. The proposed scheme achieves up to 7.4x and 1024x in energy and latency over computing in memory architectures, respectively.