ECC with increased hard error correction capability for memory reliability improvement

Abstract

Emerging non-volatile memories such as PCRAMs, MRAMs/STT-MRAMs, FRAMs, and RRAMs are promising candidates for embedded memories in upcoming digital systems. Due to their non-volatility, low-power consumption, and scalability potential, they are best suited in applications like smartphones, tablets, wearable electronics, and sensor nodes. Unfortunately, despite all advantages they offer, emerging non-volatile memories pose some peculiar characteristics like limited endurance and/or variable data retention time. This paper proposes repair mechanism based on a well-known SEC-DED code which can significantly increase the reliability of embedded non-volatile memories.