Quantization Design for Resistive Memories With Multiple Reads

TL;DR

This letter investigates the channel quantizer design for ReRAM arrays with multiple reads, which is a typical technique to improve the data recovery performance of data storage systems and proposes a semi-analytical approach to design the multiple-read single-bit quantizer with less complexity.

Abstract

Due to the crossbar array architecture, the sneak-path problem severely degrades the data integrity in the resistive random access memory (ReRAM). In this letter, we investigate the channel quantizer design for ReRAM arrays with multiple reads, which is a typical technique to improve the data recovery performance of data storage systems. Starting with a quantized channel model of ReRAM with multiple reads, we first derive a general approach for designing the channel quantizer, for both single-bit and multiple-bit quantization. We then focus on the single-bit quantization, which is highly suitable for practical applications of ReRAM. In particular, we propose a semi-analytical approach to design the multiple-read single-bit quantizer with less complexity. We also derive the theoretical bit-error probability of the optimal single-bit detector/quantization as the benchmark. Results indicate that the multiple-read operation is effective in improving the error rate performance of ReRAM. Moreover, our proposed multiple-read detector outperforms the prior art detector and achieves the performance of the optimal detector.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: (a) A $4\times 4$ crossbar array - white: high resistance cell; black: low resistance cell. (b) The corresponding logical values.
• Figure 2: The maximum MI of the ReRAM channel with different number of quantization bits ($q=1,3$) and different number of reads ($N = 1, 3$).
• Figure 3: The BER comparison of Detector 3 in ben2019detection and our proposed detector with multiple-read ($N = 2, 4$) single-bit quantization.
• Figure 4: The FER of (127, 113) BCH code (Code 1) and (127, 92) BCH code (Code 2) with Detector 3 in ben2019detection and our proposed detector with different number of reads and single-bit quantization.
• Figure 5: The FER of (128, 110) polar code (solid line) and (128, 100) polar code (dash line) with our proposed quantizer with different numbers of reads and quantization bits.