Self-Controlled Writing and Erasing in a Memristor Crossbar Memory

The memristor device technology has created waves in the research community and led to the consideration of using the device in multiple avenues. The most likely candidate for early adoption is the nonvolatile memory due to the small cell size (increased scaling potential), increased density as compared to flash, and ability to stack these devices in a crossbar structure. This paper analyzes the feasibility of a memristor memory and introduces an adaptive read, write, and erase method that may be used to realize a more resilient memory system in the face of low yield in the nanotechnology regime. The proposed method is evaluated in simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis (SPICE) and a hand analysis model is extracted to help explain the sources of power and energy consumption. Finally, the power metrics are compared to flash memory technology, and the memristor memory is shown to have an energy per bit consumption about one-tenth that of flash when programming, comparable to flash when erasing, and about one-fourth of flash when reading.