A Reconfigurable 8T SRAM Macro for Bit-Parallel Searching and Computing In-Memory

This work presents BP-SCIM: a reconfigurable 8T SRAM macro for bit-parallel searching and computing in-memory (CIM). BP-SCIM can perform in-memory Boolean logic, arithmetic, and content-addressable memory (CAM) operations. Novel peripheral circuits and algorithms are proposed to support complex arithmetic operations such as multiplication and division. A $256\times 64$ BP-SCIM test chip was implemented in 65-nm CMOS technology. The 8-bit addition and 8-bit multiplication operations can achieve the best energy efficiency of 3.11 TOPS/W and 0.17 TOPS/W, respectively at 0.7 V supply. For the binary CAM search operation, BP-SCIM can achieve the minimum energy consumption of 0.91 fJ/bit/search at 87 MHz and 0.8 V supply.