SpinSim: A Computer Architecture-Level Variation Aware STT-MRAM Performance Evaluation Framework

With low power consumption, fast access speed, high scalability and infinite endurance, spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive random access memory (STT-MRAM) is considered as one of the most promising alternatives to SRAM. However, The performance of STT-MRAM is significantly influenced by several reliability issues, such as process variations and stochastic switching. Most of the reliability analysis of relative circuits are performed at bit-cell and memory level, while that at computer-system level is missing. This paper proposes an efficient framework for performance evaluation of STT-MRAM on computer architecture-level implemented by GEM5+NVMain co-simulator in consideration of the reliability issues. The results show that the overall average latency and energy of STT-MRAM can be up to 5.996% and 20.65% larger than that of the nominal cases in a computer system-level memory architecture taking reliability issues into account. Because reliability issues are considered during the design phase, our framework can provide more accurate performance evaluation and contribute to a higher yield of STT-MRAM based computer systems.