Fabrication of a 3000-6-input-LUTs embedded and block-level power-gated nonvolatile FPGA chip using p-MTJ-based logic-in-memory structure

Abstract

A nonvolatile FPGA (NVFPGA) test chip, where 3000 6-input lookup table (LUT) circuits are embedded, is fabricated under 90nm CMOS/75nm perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (p-MTJ) technologies. The use of a p-MTJ device makes data-backup-limitation free, which essentially eliminates damage control to nonvolatile storage devices. The use of a p-MTJ device also enables the extension towards dynamically reconfigurable logic paradigm. Since hardware components are shared among all the p-MTJ devices by the use of logic-in-memory structure, the effective area of the 6-input LUT circuit is reduced by 56% compared to that of an SRAM-based one. Moreover, block-level power gating, in which all the idle function blocks are optimally turned off in accordance with the operation mode, can minimize static power consumption of each tile. As a result, the total average power of the proposed NVFPGA is reduced by 81% in comparison with that of an SRAM-based FPGA under typical benchmark-circuit realizations.