Quantization Design for Resistive Memories With Multiple Reads

TL;DR

This paper explores the design of quantizers for resistive memories with multiple reads to mitigate sneak-path issues, proposing a semi-analytical method that improves error rates and outperforms existing detectors.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-analytical design approach for multiple-read single-bit quantizers in ReRAM, enhancing data recovery performance and providing theoretical error probability analysis.

Findings

Multiple-read operation improves error rate performance.

Proposed detector outperforms prior art and approaches optimal performance.

Design method reduces complexity of quantizer implementation.

Abstract

Due to the crossbar array architecture, the sneak-path problem severely degrades the data integrity in the resistive random access memory (ReRAM). In this letter, we investigate the channel quantizer design for ReRAM arrays with multiple reads, which is a typical technique to improve the data recovery performance of data storage systems. Starting with a quantized channel model of ReRAM with multiple reads, we first derive a general approach for designing the channel quantizer, for both single-bit and multiple-bit quantization. We then focus on the single-bit quantization, which is highly suitable for practical applications of ReRAM. In particular, we propose a semi-analytical approach to design the multiple-read single-bit quantizer with less complexity. We also derive the theoretical bit-error probability of the optimal single-bit detector/quantization as the benchmark. Results indicate that the multiple-read operation is effective in improving the error rate performance of ReRAM. Moreover, our proposed multiple-read detector outperforms the prior art detector and achieves the performance of the optimal detector.