Novel Radiation-Hardened Designs of Hybrid Spintronic/CMOS Circuit for Multi-Node Upset Tolerance

Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) enables next-generation higher densities and radiation-hardened main working memory. However, its peripheral CMOS read/write circuits are susceptible to radiation effects. In this paper, we propose two radiation-hardened read circuits for spin transfer torque (STT) MRAM, one for high radiation intensity environments and another for low radiation intensity environments. On the basis of a CMOS 40 nm design kit and a physics-based STT-magnetic tunnel junction compact model, we complete function verification. The moderately-hardened sense amplifier can recover from all single-event upsets (SEUs) and partial double-node upsets (DNUs). The strongly-hardened sense amplifier can resist not only all SEUs and DNUs but also partial triple-node upsets (TNUs) and quadruple-node upsets (QNUs). Moreover, it achieves radiation tolerance up to 60pC.