Energy-delay performance of giant spin Hall effect switching for dense magnetic memory

We show that the giant spin Hall effect (GSHE) magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) can enable better energy delay and voltage performance than MTJ spin torque devices at 10-30 nm scaled nanomagnet dimensions. We propose a dense bit cell composed of a folded electrode to enable scaling to sub-10 nm CMOS. We derive the energy-delay trajectory and energy-delay product of GSHE and MTJ devices with an energy minimum at the magnetic characteristic time. Optimized GSHE devices with PMA can enable low voltage (<0.1 V), scaled dimensions, and fast switching time (100 Ps) at an average switching energy approaching 100 aJ/bit. (C) 2014 The Japan Society of Applied Physics