Abstract:
A method of encoding data stored in a crossbar memory array, such as a nanowire crossbar memory array, to enable significant increases in memory size, modifies data words to have equal numbers of ‘1’ bits and ‘0’ bits, and stores the modified words together with information enabling the original data to be retrieved upon being read out from memory.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
       [0001]    This application claims benefit under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/937,598 filed on Jun. 28, 2007, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. 
     
    
     STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT 
       [0002]    This invention was not made in the course of federally sponsored research or development. 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0003]    Silicon-based integrated circuits have long been the mainstay of the electronics industry, driving products to become smaller and faster based on the predictions made by Moore&#39;s Law. Recently however, these scaling trends have slowed due to difficulties in fabricating nanometer scale devices. It is predicted that soon, lithographic based fabrication will reach a barrier when attempting to pattern devices containing only a few atoms per transistor. Research efforts are in place to find a solution to these lithographic limitations within the standard CMOS process. 
         [0004]    Many novel technologies have been proposed as alternatives to the traditional CMOS process. A few of such devices are carbon nanotubes, quantum cellular automata (QCA), single electron transistors, and molecular devices. Carbon nanotubes are popular devices among researchers due to their potential for extremely fast operating speeds. The problem with carbon nanotubes lies in the difficulty to accurately place large quantities of nanotubes in a patterned layout. QCA presents a simple concept to creating nano-electronic logic; however, QCA suffers from the lack of any fault tolerance within the architecture itself. Single electron transistors also are popular due to their potential for extremely high switching speeds; however single electron transistors suffer from the inability to operate anywhere near room temperature. Single electron transistors generally require temperatures below 20° Kelvin for stability. Molecular devices allow for fast switching speeds, while being able to operate at room temperature. Since the standard architecture for these devices is the regular crossbar array, it is easy to pattern and layout large quantities of these devices useful for both memory and logic. 
         [0005]    Additional benefits of molecular devices pertain specifically to non-volatile memory design. Certain molecules, such as Rotaxane and nitro-based OPE (Oligophenylene ethynylenes), have two different conductivity states when placed into a crossbar array based design. One state is a high conductivity state, and the other is a low conductivity state. These two states represent the equivalents of logic ‘1’ and logic ‘0’ as found in memories such as SRAM and DRAM. Using these devices in the crossbar array yields a molecular-based, non-volatile memory architecture. This particular memory architecture is of interest mainly due to the device density. The ITRS (International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors) states that molecular memories have the smallest demonstrated and projected cell area of 30 nm and 5 nm respectively, and the smallest projected feature size of 5F 2 . 
         [0006]    One large drawback of this molecular memory architecture is that as the memory size grows larger, introducing more devices into the crossbar array, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish a logic ‘1’ from a logic ‘0’. This is due to the parasitic current paths existing within the crossbar array itself. In fact, this is an intrinsic problem with the crossbar array and exists in any memory array based on this crossbar architecture. One potential solution to this problem is to make the devices themselves act more like true diodes. In this sense, current could not flow through the parasitic paths of the crossbar array because certain devices would be reverse-biased, allowing only minutely small amounts of current to leak through the array. However, in practice this would be difficult to achieve, merely due to the scale of the devices within the architecture. Most of these molecules are only a few angstroms long, which will elicit band-to-band tunneling across the device even if the molecule is indeed more diode-like. 
         [0007]    Thus, there exists a need to eliminate the effects of these parasitic current paths, allowing for larger, readable crossbar-array based memory arrays to be obtained. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0008]    According to one preferred embodiment, a memory device is formed by a two-dimensional crossbar array of molecular devices. This crossbar array structure includes one layer of parallel nanowires crossed perpendicularly by another layer of parallel nanowires. At each junction of this array of nanowires exists a bi-stable molecular device, creating an array of two terminal bi-stable devices. 
         [0009]    The invention encompasses both an architectural adjustment to the crossbar array memory, and an encoding solution to eliminate the impacts of parasitic currents on the memory. The general method to access one bit from the memory is to apply a voltage on one vertical wire (column) and observe the output voltage or current on one particular horizontal wire (row). The device intersecting these two wires is the device under test (DUT). 
         [0010]    In the preferred embodiment, all the rows and columns not being accesses are grounded. This is done through a series of multiplexers connected to each nanowire. This grounding eliminates all of the off-selected-row parasitic current paths. Consequently, only the parasitics from the on-row devices can affect the DUT. 
         [0011]    In the preferred embodiment, each word is encoded so that the impacts of the parasitics are eliminated. By encoding each word to hold half logic ‘1’ values and half logic ‘0’ values, each bit becomes uniquely readable, and the voltage ‘1’/‘0’ ratio ceases to decrease with increasing array size. This allows for arbitrarily large crossbar memory arrays, without any of the parasitic current problems. In addition, the encoding scheme is intrinsically parity checked, which allows for easy checking of bit errors. 
         [0012]    Balanced encoding algorithms aim to equate the number of ‘0’s and ‘1’s for a given binary stream. For illustrative purposes, the following example algorithm is provided:
       (1) Count the number of 1&#39;s in the word.       
 
         [0000]      ‘10110111’−Has six ‘1’s=[110]  (count1)       (2) Serially flip each bit until the word contains half ‘1’s and half ‘0’s. Count the number of bits flipped.         
         [0000]      Resulting word−‘01000111’=[100]  (count2)       (3) Attach count2, followed by its inverse  count2 , to the new word.         
         [0000]      Final word−‘01000111[100][011]’ 
         [0016]    This encoding/architectural solution will work with any crossbar array-based memory, not only with molecular memories. Other bi-stable, resistive, crossbar array memories, such as MRAM, are also based upon this architecture, and this scheme will provide the same results to these other memories. 
         [0017]    As discussed above, although the potential for molecular memory technology is high, and promising results have been shown, there exists in the art a major issue concerning memory scaling with this architecture, in particular with molecular memory. As the memory size increases, it becomes very difficult to distinguish the value of each stored bit. The invention presented here eliminates this problem, allowing the designer to create arbitrarily large memories without the risk of bit errors due to memory scaling issues. This can drastically lower the incidence of bit errors and is cohesive with any crossbar array-based molecular memory. 
         [0018]    For example, one benefit of the invention is the use of encoding to eliminate the impact of stray parasitic currents in memory. A second benefit is the use of balanced encoding to encode words in crossbar array-based memories. This provides an adequate coding method to eliminate the impact of parasitic currents within these crossbar memories. 
         [0019]    Some non-limiting and exemplary products and services that various embodiments may utilize include the following:
       Ultra dense processors, which require very dense memory arrays to support them;   Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) designs, which utilize very dense off-chip memories for storing and reconfigurability;   Any design requiring on-chip memory. These memory structures could serve as replacements for bulky SRAM and embedded DRAM architectures.       
 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0023]      FIG. 1  is a three dimensional view of an example crossbar memory array, showing two layers of parallel nanowires crossing perpendicularly. At each junction exists a bi-stable resistive device, creating an array of two terminal devices. 
           [0024]      FIG. 2  illustrates the typical hysteretic IV characteristic of these bi-stable resistive devices. 
           [0025]      FIG. 3A  is a schematic representation of an example version of a crossbar array, where each crossing nanowire is connected by a bi-stable device. In this view, the device in the upper left corner is being read. A voltage is applied on the leftmost column, and a voltage is read out on the uppermost row. Also, the unselected rows and columns are grounded. 
           [0026]      FIG. 3B  is an example schematic representation for reading a device Rd, with all of the unselected rows and columns grounded. 
           [0027]      FIG. 4A  is an example schematic representation of a balanced encoded memory when the device under test is a logic ‘1’. 
           [0028]      FIG. 4B  is an example schematic representation of a balanced encoded memory when the device under test is a logic ‘0’. 
           [0029]      FIG. 5  is a graph showing simulated results from an encoded memory. The ‘1’/‘0’ ratio comparison is shown on the left axis, and the actual encoding voltages are shown on the right axis. It is shown that as the memory gets larger, the encoded ‘1’/‘0’ ratio slightly increases up towards 1000, while the unencoded array decreases below 1. 
           [0030]      FIG. 6  is a block diagram of an example encoder/decoder. 
           [0031]      FIG. 7  is a block diagram of one slice of an encoder block in accordance with the invention. 
           [0032]      FIG. 8  is a block diagram of an overall hardware architecture of an encoder in accordance with the invention. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
     Molecular Crossbar Array 
       [0033]      FIG. 1  illustrates a crossbar array in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. The crossbar structure consists of a first layer of parallel nanowires  10  crossed perpendicularly by another layer of parallel nanowires  12 . At each junction in this array of nanowires exists a bi-stable resistive device  14 , creating an array of two terminal bi-stable devices. A typical current-voltage (IV) curve for this type of bi-stable device is shown in  FIG. 2 . There are two different conductivity states shown in this IV curve, each state representing either a logic ‘1’ or logic ‘0’. The devices of interest for this invention are reconfigurable, meaning they can be switched from one state to another by applying either a large positive or negative voltage across the two terminals. With this, there now exists an array of two terminal, programmable devices, each device capable of storing either a logic ‘1’ or logic ‘0’, which is essential for memory. 
         [0034]      FIG. 3A  shows a schematic representation of the crossbar memory. In this figure, the device R D  in the upper left hand corner is being accessed and read by applying a voltage, V RD , on the leftmost nanowire column and reading out the voltage on the uppermost nanowire row. In the typical architecture, the dashed wires shown in  FIG. 3A  are left out, leaving the unselected rows and columns “floating” while trying to read one bit. However, since these devices are not ideal diodes, they have both a forward-biased and a reverse-biased current, which means current will flow through not only the selected device R D , but also through all of the unselected devices, even if these devices are off. The currents flowing through the unselected devices are termed “parasitic currents,” as they are undesirable in the memory. 
         [0035]    Ideally, the output read at the terminal OUT in  FIG. 3A  should be only dependent upon the DUT R D ; however these parasitic currents flow through the array and obscure the output voltage read at output terminal OUT. As the array grows larger, more and more of these unselected devices pass parasitic currents to the output, eventually making it impossible to clearly decide whether the DUT is a logic ‘1’ or a logic ‘0’. This impact is shown in  FIG. 5 . The line marked with diamonds represents the voltage ‘1’/‘0’ ratio of a bit in an unencoded memory. As is shown, the ratio drops below 1 after the array grows slightly past 4 kilobits in size. At this point, it would be impossible to determine the state of the bit in the array, rendering the memory useless. 
         [0036]    In accordance with the invention, the unselected rows and columns are grounded while reading a particular bit, in this case R D . This shunts to ground any off-selected-row parasitic currents, shown as I uc  in  FIG. 3A , making the output OUT dependent only on the selected device R D  and whatever parasitic currents exist from the unselected devices on the same row as R D . This equivalent circuit is shown in  FIG. 3B . 
       Balanced Coded Array 
       [0037]    As shown in  FIG. 3B , the voltage read at the node OUT will be dependent upon the current drawn through the device R D  and the unselected devices on this same row. Given an arbitrary word stored in these devices, it is impossible to know the exact current drawn through these unselected devices, since the states of these devices are unknown. 
         [0038]    In a preferred embodiment, each word is encoded and stored into this memory so that the lumped resistance of these unselected devices becomes known; therefore, the exact current drawn through them becomes known. Once the current draw through these unselected devices becomes known, it is easy to determine the exact current draw for reading a logic ‘1’ and for a logic ‘0’ from the device R D  as shown in  FIG. 3A . 
         [0039]    Encoding each word to have half ones and half zeros places half of the devices in each word into a high conductivity state, and the other half into a low conductivity state. Now the lumped equivalent parallel resistance of the unselected devices can be easily determined, given the device resistance values in each state. For example, given a four bit balanced coded word, assume the DUT (R D  in this case) is a logic ‘1’, which is represented by ‘R’ (logic ‘0’ is represented by ‘r’). This situation is described in  FIG. 4A . Since the DUT is a logic ‘1’, and the word is balanced coded, two of the unselected devices must be logic ‘0’ and one unselected device must be a logic ‘1’. This yields half ‘1’s and half ‘0’s, the primary property of the balanced encoding scheme. The order of the ‘1’s and ‘0’s does not matter, since now this resistance can be lumped together by the formula shown in  FIG. 4A : [2/r+1/R)] −1 . This situation also holds true when reading a logic ‘0’ represented by ‘r’, as is shown in  FIG. 4B . Now there must exist two logic ‘1’s and one logic ‘0’ in the unselected devices for the encoding scheme to hold, and the equivalent resistance of these unselected devices is shown in  FIG. 4B : [2/R+1/r)] −1 . This will hold true over all array sizes where the formulas for the lumped unselected device resistance is as follows, where N is the number of devices in a row:
       (1) The value of the lumped resistance when the DUT is a logic ‘0’       
 
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         [0042]      FIG. 5  shows the ‘1’/‘0’ current ratios for the encoded and unencoded memories, and the exact voltage values for the encoded memory over various array sizes. Notice that the unencoded ‘1’/‘0’ ratio decreases as the array size increases. This again is because the parasitic current paths are affecting the output, making a logic ‘1’ seem more and more like a logic ‘0’. However, the ‘1’/‘0’ ratio for the encoded memory actually increases as the array size grows. This increase is somewhat counterintuitive, however the increase is very small (factor of 2 while increasing area from 4×4 to 128×128). This is probably due to the nonlinearities in the devices themselves, which can be easily observed through the IV curve shown in  FIG. 2 . 
         [0043]    There are two more important things to notice. One is that for each array size, there exists only one logic ‘1’ voltage, and one logic ‘0’ voltage. This is because the encoding makes the output deterministic, whereas before the voltage output depended on the state of each device in the array, yielding a worst and best case value. The second thing to notice is simply that the encoded ‘1’/‘0’ ratios are 100 to 1000 times higher than the unencoded ratios, making it much easier to determine the logic state of the device. 
       Hardware Implementation of Balanced Encoding 
       [0044]      FIG. 6  is an illustrative block diagram of an encoder/decoder in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. The first step in the encoder counts the number of ‘1’s in the word. This count, along with the original word is fed into a ‘bit flipper’, which flips bits serially until the number of ‘1’s is equal to the number of ‘0’s, and counts the number of bits flipped. Next, the modified word will be written to memory, together with the counts of original ‘1’s and number of bits flipped. On the decoder side, the word is first read from the memory, and bits are flipped to obtain the original word (performed in the Decode block). Also in this figure, the blocks with vertical fill lines are a binary representation of the number of bits that were flipped to achieve the balanced code. The horizontal fill line blocks represent the potential bits that were flipped. 
         [0045]    For example, assume an input word to be stored of 10110111. The ‘1’s counter will count six ‘1’s and output that count as count1. Next, the bit flipper begins to flip the bits in the input word until the number of ‘1’s equals the number of ‘0’s. The first two bit “flips” from ‘1’ to ‘0’ and from ‘0’ to ‘1’ essentially cancel each other out. The third and fourth “flips” will flip ‘1’s to ‘0’s and consequently change the number of ‘1’s from six to four, thereby equalizing the number of ‘1’s and ‘0’s in the word. At this point, the bit flipper stops flipping bits and outputs the number of bits flipped as count2 (here, four or 100 binary). The resultant modified word, 01000111, is then written to memory together with count2 and its inverse  count2 . The reason for appending the inverse of count2 to the stored word is to maintain an equal number of ‘1’ and ‘0’ bits in the stored word. 
         [0046]      FIG. 7  shows the detailed architecture of one embodiment of an encoder slice used in the ‘Bit Flipper’ in  FIG. 6 . Each slice takes in the input count, which is the current number of ‘1’s in the word, and the unencoded input bit. The comparator compares the current input count to half of the length of the original input word. If this comparison is false, this means the word is unbalanced, and does not have half ‘1’s and half ‘0’s. If this comparison is true, then the word is balanced. Given a false comparison, the current input bit is flipped and fed to the output, and the up/down counter increases/decreases the ‘1’ count based on which way the input bit was flipped. This count is then fed to the next stage. If the comparison returned as true, the original input bit is fed to the output without being flipped, and the input count (which happens to equal half of the length of the input word) is fed directly to the output without being updated. 
         [0047]    This slice is then included into a larger datapath, where there is one slice per bit in the word. This is shown in  FIG. 8 . This figure is an illustrative representation of the architecture of the encoder. First, the number of ‘1’s in the input is determined by the ‘1’ counter, and this count is fed into the first slice of the datapath. Then each slice determines whether the count has converged to half ‘1’s and half ‘0’s, and outputs the encoded word. These slices also output a tag, which is simply the number of bits that were flipped to achieve the encoded output. This tag, along with its inverse, is attached to the end of the encoded word. The reason the inverse of the tag is attached is to maintain the correct number of ‘1’s and ‘0’s, and makes it easy to determine whether there is a bit error in the tag. Simply XORing each bit in the tag with each bit in the inverse tag should yield a ‘1’ if there is no bit error. If the result is ‘0’, this means there is a bit error in the tag, and this row in memory must be replaced by some replacement method. 
         [0048]    In the decoder, the bits of the modified word are simply flipped again, by count2. Going back to the example above, the modified word 01000111 is read from memory, together with count2 of 100 (i.e., four). Thus from count2 it is known that the first four bits of the modified word should be flipped. The resultant word, 10110111, consequently corresponds to the original word that was inputted to be stored in the memory. 
         [0049]    Those of ordinary skill may vary the methods for writing and reading bits from memory, or the memory architecture without varying from the scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims.