Defect Analysis of MCA Wires

Abstract

As devices continue to scale, imperfections in the fabrication process will have a more substantial impact on the reliability of a system. In Magnetic Cellular Automata (MCA) data is transferred through the coupling of neighboring cells via magnetic force fields. Due to the size of the switching cells, usually of the order of nanometers or smaller, MCA can be sensitive to inherent fabrication defects such as irregular spacing and non-uniform cell structures. Here we investigate conventional electron beam lithography fabrication defects and present a simulation based study on their effects on information propagation in a wire. The study varies the location of the different types of defects throughout the MCA wire under the in influence of a spatial moving clocking field. We demonstrate that with the proposed spatially moving clock the most probable fabrication defects of MCA do not affect the information propagation and the location of the defect does not play a significant role in computation. Thus it is concluded that MCA wires demonstrate significant defect robustness towards realistic electron beam lithography shortcomings.