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arXiv · 2604.06667

Computing In Spintronic Memory: A Thermal Perspective

Patrick Miller·Hüsrev Cilasun·Sachin S. Sapatnekar·Ulya R. Karpuzcu
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Abstract

Computing-in-Memory (CiM) is a promising paradigm to address the memory bottleneck constraining traditional systems. Most power-efficient CiM variants can directly perform Boolean operations in non-volatile memory arrays. Higher microarchitectural activity due to CiM, however, can significantly increase power density (power per area) and result in thermal hotspots. In this paper, we provide a quantitative thermal characterization for CiM. We demonstrate that (i) the temperature remains mostly uniform due to lateral thermal conduction; (ii) the temperature increases linearly with the number of memory cells participating in computation; (iii) the temperature decreases linearly with the memory array size; (iv) the memory technology dictates the power density, hence the thermal characteristics.

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Patrick Miller, Hüsrev Cilasun, Sachin S. Sapatnekar, Ulya R. Karpuzcu. 2026-04-08. Computing In Spintronic Memory: A Thermal Perspective. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.06667

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