Low-power 3D integrated ferromagnetic computing (Invited Paper)

As CMOS scaling becomes more and more challen- ging there is strong impetus for beyond CMOS device research to add new functionality to ICs. In this article, a promising technology with non-volatile ferromagnetic computing states - the so-called perpendicular Nanomagnetic Logic (pNML) - is reviewed. After introducing the 2D planar implementation of NML with magnetization perpendicular to the surface, the path to monolithically 3D integrated systems is discussed. Instead of CMOS substitution, additional functionality is added by a co- processor architecture as a prospective back-end-of-line (BEOL) process. The unconventional computation in the ferromagnetic domain can lead to highly dense computing structures wi- thout leakage currents, atto-joule dissipation per bit operati- on and data-throughputs comparable to state-of-the-art high- performance CMOS CPUs.