State of the Art and Challenges for Test and Reliability of Emerging Non-volatile Resistive Memories

Abstract

The power and reliability issues of today's memories (static and dynamic RAMs) reduce the advances achieved by their implementation in scaled technology. There are several emergent memory technologies that address the technical constraints of today's memories, among which the most promising solutions are the resistance-based memories, such as phase change memories, the redox-based resistive memories, and the spin-transfer torque magnetic memories. These technologies are facing various challenges that have to be addressed to render them efficient in today's applications. Until recently, research focus was on the design for performance and power efficiency, but lately, the test and reliability issues of these devices have become of major concern to the community. This paper presents an overview of the challenges and proposed test and reliability boost solutions developed to suit the needs of the emerging memories under analysis. It underlines (1) the unique faults that occur in the memory cell due to known issues in the emerging storage devices, (2) the dedicated solutions developed for efficient testing of the emerging memories under study, (3) the main reliability concerns related to the emerging storage devices, and (4) the design solutions targeted at mitigating these reliability issues.