MESL: Proposal for a Non-volatile Cascadable Magneto-Electric Spin Logic

TL;DR

This paper introduces MESL, a voltage-driven, non-volatile logic device using magneto-electric effects for scalable, energy-efficient computing, with demonstrated logic gates and favorable thermal robustness.

Contribution

It proposes a novel MESL device leveraging magneto-electric switching, including a complete logic family with detailed simulation analysis.

Findings

Quadratic scaling of switching energy with voltage

Better thermal noise robustness than current-driven methods

Energy and delay performance validated through simulations

Abstract

In the quest for novel, scalable and energy-efficient computing technologies, many non-charge based logic devices are being explored. Recent advances in multi-ferroic materials have paved the way for electric field induced low energy and fast switching of nano-magnets using the magneto-electric (ME) effect. In this paper, we propose a voltage driven logic-device based on the ME induced switching of nano-magnets. We further demonstrate that the proposed logic-device, which exhibits decoupled read and write paths, can be used to construct a complete logic family including XNOR, NAND and NOR gates. The proposed logic family shows good scalability with a quadratic dependence of switching energy with respect to the switching voltage. Further, the proposed logic-device has better robustness against the effect of thermal noise as compared to the conventional current driven switching of nano-magnets. A device-to-circuit level coupled simulation framework, including magnetization dynamics and electron transport model, has been developed for analyzing the present proposal. Using our simulation framework, we present energy and delay results for the proposed Magneto-Electric Spin Logic (MESL) gates.