Defect Characterization in Magnetic Cellular Automata (MCA) Arrays

Anita Kumari,  Javier Pulecio,  Sanjukta Bhanja
University of South Florida


Abstract

Magnetic Cellular Automata (MCA) utilizes mutual exchange energies of neighboring magnetic cells to order the single-domain magnetic cell which in turn performs computational tasks. In this paper, we study three dominant type of geometric defects (missing, spacing, merging) in array (used as interconnects) based on our fabrication experiments. We study effect of these defects in three segments of the array (near-input, center and near-output) and we have observed that location of these defects play an important role in masking of the errors. Observed simulation results indicate that most of the defects occurring around center and near-output would be masked generating correct behavior while defects in the near-input segment would mostly cause erroneous output. We also observe that MCA is extremely robust towards space irregularities, one of the most common form of defect we observed through our fabrication techniques.