  The storage industry is moving toward emerging non-volatile memories (NVMs),
including the spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive random-access memory
(STT-MRAM) and the phase-change memory (PCM), owing to their high density and
low-power operation. In this paper, we demonstrate, for the first time, circuit
models and performance benchmarking for the domain wall (DW) reversal-based
magnetoelectric-antiferromagnetic random access memory (ME-AFMRAM) at
cell-level and at array-level. We also provide perspectives for coherent
rotation-based memory switching with topological insulator-driven anomalous
Hall read-out. In the coherent rotation regime, the ultra-low power
magnetoelectric switching coupled with the terahertz-range antiferromagnetic
dynamics result in substantially lower energy-per-bit and latency metrics for
the ME-AFMRAM compared to other NVMs including STTMRAM and PCM. After
characterizing the novel ME-AFMRAM, we leverage its unique properties to build
a dense, on-chip, secure NVM platform, called SMART: A Secure Magnetoelectric
Antiferromagnet- Based Tamper-Proof Non-Volatile Memory. New NVM technologies
open up challenges and opportunities from a data-security perspective. For
example, their sensitivity to magnetic fields and temperature fluctuations, and
their data remanence after power-down make NVMs vulnerable to data theft and
tampering attacks. The proposed SMART memory is not only resilient against data
confidentiality attacks seeking to leak sensitive information but also ensures
data integrity and prevents Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on the memory. It
is impervious to particular power side-channel (PSC) attacks which exploit
asymmetric read/write signatures for 0 and 1 logic levels, and photonic
side-channel attacks which monitor photo-emission signatures from the chip
backside.
