Low-power 3D integrated ferromagnetic computing

As CMOS scaling becomes more and more challenging 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 coprocessor architecture as a prospective back-end-of-line (BEOL) process. The unconventional computation in the ferromagnetic domain can lead to highly dense computing structures without leakage currents, atto-joule dissipation per bit operation and data-throughputs comparable to state-of-the-art high-performance CMOS CPUs.