Experimental Investigation of 4-kb RRAM Arrays Programming Conditions Suitable for TCAM

Resistive random access memories (RRAMs) feature high-speed operations, low-power consumption, and nonvolatile retention, thus serving as a promising candidate for future memory applications. To explore the applications of the RRAM, switching variability and cycling endurance need to be addressed. This paper presents extensive characterizations of multi-kb RRAM arrays during forming, set, reset, and cycling operations. The relationships among programming conditions, memory window, and endurance features are presented. The experimental results are then used to perform variability-aware simulations of a 128-bit RRAM-based ternary content-addressable-memory (TCAM) macro. The tradeoff among endurance, search latency, and reliability in terms of match/mismatch detection is explored, identifying the programming conditions that allow to obtain a searching speed comparable to static random access memory-based TCAMs (2 ns on average and 3 ns at 3 sigma) while guaranteeing good reliability metrics (with a time ratio of 3000 on average and 150 at 3 sigma).