A skyrmion content-addressable cell for skyrmion magnetic memories

Content-addressable memories (CAMs) allow searching a pattern, processing in parallel all the data stored. Beyond-CMOS technologies can provide new opportunities to improve CAM memories implementations both at the device and architectural level. In this article, we propose a ternary content-addressable memory cell based on skyrmion technology. The proposed memory cell is based on skyrmion racetrack memory. The cell is able to signal if the bit contained in the cell in form of skyrmion corresponds to an electrical input, the target of the search operation. The proposed design, verified by means of micromagnetic simulations, has an area of 0.054 mu m(2) and can perform a search operation in 3.3 ns with an energy of 10.5 fJ. The operation performed is non-destructive and does not require conversion between the magnetic and the electronic domains. For this reason, the designed cell has the potential to be used as a basic block for non-volatile CAM memories. Here, we propose also a layout structure to implement a CAM memory employing the proposed cell. This structure allows to achieve memory density comparable to traditional racetrack memories and execute at the same time CAM operations.