MAGNETORESISTIVE WAFER SCALE MEMORY WITH ON BOARD SEARCH/CACHE FUNCTIONS

WAFER SCALE, NONVOLATILE, MAGNETORESISTIVE MEMORIES WITH PARALLEL SEARCH CAPABILITY AND CACHING CAPABILITY, ARE BEING ANALYZED AND EXPERIMENTALLY VERIFIED. BECAUSE MAGNETORESISTIVE MEMORIES ARE NONVOLATILE, VERY DENSE, VERY FAST IF BIT AREA IS INCREASED, AND ARE FAST READING AND WRITING WITHOUT WEAROUT, THEY ARE WELL SUITED FOR APPLICATION IN MEMORY ARCHITECTURES REQUIRING LARGE NONVOLATILE FILES SUCH AS THOSE USED IN RELATIONAL DATABASES AND SEARCH FILES. BY INCLUSION OF SEARCH CAPABILITY EACH ACTIVE DIE OF A WAFER, SEARCH SPEED CAN BE INCREASED BY A FACTOR OF UP TO 10,000 OVER THE SEARCH RATE WHICH COULD BE ACHIEVED BY SIMPLY USING THE SERIAL BYTE STREAM RATE FROM THE WAFER. IN ADDITION, ON BOARD CACHING FUNCTIONS WOULD SPEED GENERAL PURPOSE READ/WRITE OPERATIONS, ALLOWING THE WAFER SCALE MEMORY TO REPLACE ALL THE COMPONENTS OF A CONTEMPORARY COMPUTER MEMORY (CACHE MEMORY, MAIN MEMORY, AND DISK), WHILE PROVIDING PERFORMANCE ADVANTAGES. AN OPTIMUM ALLOCATION OF CHIP AREA IN TERMS OF MAIN MEMORY VERSUS CACHE MEMORY IS DETERMINED GIVEN THE SPECIFIED PERFORMANCE AND ELECTRICAL CONSTRAINTS. POWER AND BUS PERFORMANCE FOR A TYPICAL SYSTEM WILL BE DEMONSTRATED EXPERIMENTALLY. CELL AND MEMORY PERFORMANCE WILL BE VERIFIED BY SIMULATION.