Reconfigurable Magnetic Logic – MGATE magneto-resistive universal logic gate

Today’s transistor based logic gates commonly realize only one fixed logical function. Integrated digital circuitry in electronic industry therefore utilizes huge amounts of different logic gates. The complexity of large integrated circuitry can be strongly reduced by logic gates with reconfigurable logical functions. A promising approach to provide reconfigurable logic gates is to utilize cells based on magneto resistive effects like GMR or magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ). To reach this goal the here presented technology called MGATE was developed. With only two MTJs the researchers realized a novel reconfigurable logic gate which is capable of providing each of all basic logical functions (AND, NOT, NAND, OR, NOR, XOR, and XNOR) on demand in one unit.

Commercial Opportunities: Due to the compatibility with established MRAM technologies MGATE enables the combination of logic and storage units in a whole magnetic non-volatile setup. Power saving can simply be achieved by switching off temporarily inactive units as the last information is instantaneously available on restart. MGATE opens a new approach to overcome restrictions that come along with the common Von-Neumann architecture due to complex and lossy interconnections. Even certain manufacturing errors could be corrected by simple “reprogramming” of the magnetic logic gates. Common FPGAs today are not fast enough for such concepts. The novel MGATE technology overcomes these disadvantages as the speed of programming the logic function is the same as the speed of operation.

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