Logic Synthesis for Hybrid CMOS-ReRAM Sequential Circuits

Abstract

Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM) is an emerging non-volatile technology with high scalability and zero standby power which allows to perform logic primitives. ReRAM crossbar arrays combined with a CMOS ubstrate provide a wide range of benefits in logic synthesis. In this paper, we propose to exploit ReRAM in sequential circuits as it provides both required features as a computational and memory element. We propose a fully automated synthesis approach based on graph representations (i.e., BDDs and AIGs) for synthesis of sequential circuits on hybrid CMOS-ReRAM architectures. We propose an algorithm to efficiently divide the target function into two independent computational parts. This allows to merge part of the computation within a ReRAM unit and utilize its computational capabilities besides its function as a sequential element in order to minimize the CMOS overhead. Experimental results show that ReRAM allows for a significant reduction in CMOS size of up to 40.9% for BDDs with an average of 8.7% for BDDs and up to 10.1% with an average of 3.2% for AIGs.