Lifecycle Management of RRAMs: Quality and Reliability

Resistive Random-Access Memories (RRAMs) represent one of the most promising candidates to replace traditional charge-based memories, such as Dynamic RAMs (DRAMs) and flash. In more detail, these emerging memories address issues related to traditional memories’ manufacturing process, reliability, power consumption and performance. Despite these advantages, RRAMs are also susceptible to manufacturing deviations affecting their quality at time zero as well as to time-dependent deviations, which compromise their reliability during lifetime. Thus, RRAMs’ adoption requires a holistic approach able to properly address these challenges, from design to obsolescence. In this context, this paper presents a lifecycle management approach assuming RRAMs’ peculiarities. The different lifecycle phases and related challenges are going to be summarized. Finally, a discussion about the main sources of quality and reliability issues according to the lifecycle phases, as well as the possible solutions able to address these main issues, will be presented.