December 2016

2016 is soon over - and this was a very exciting year for the MRAM industry. Everspin floated on the Nasdaq and started sampling 256Mb STT-MRAM chips, other companies also announced and launched MRAM devices, and IBM announced that the "time for STT-MRAM is now". Interest in MRAM technologies is certainly on the rise!

Here are the top 10 stories posted on MRAM-Info in 2016, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

• IBM demonstrated 11nm STT-MRAM junction, says "time for STT-MRAM is now" (Jul 8)
• Everspin starts sampling 256Mb ST-MRAM chips, plans 1Gb chips by the end of 2016 (Apr 15)
• Samsung will be ready with MRAM chips "soon" (Apr 21)
• Researchers suggest and demonstrate a new scheme of spin-orbit-torque (SOT) induced magnetization switching (Mar 22)
• IBM demonstrates Everspin's ST-MRAM in its ConTutto platform in a Power8 system (Apr 9)
• New etching process developed specifically for MRAM production (Mar 6)
• Everspin starts shipping perpendicular-MTJ based ST-MRAM chip samples (Aug 9)
• Researchers developed a spin-orbit torque based device, an alternative to STT (Jul 22)
• New logo and updated design (Jan 8)
• Spin Transfer Technologies produced working 60-nm STT-MRAM prototypes (Feb 4)

2016 will soon come to an end, and we are getting ready to summarize another interesting spintronics year. One year ago we posted the top MRAM stories in 2015, and you can see the list below again:

1. Toshiba shows a new STT-MRAM test chip that consumes about 80% less power than SRAM memory
2. Keysight Technologies to launch an STT-MRAM test solution product developed in collaboration with Tohoku and the CIES
3. E2v launches a 32Mb stacked-package MRAM device
4. STT-MRAM MTJ cells can be used to mimick the human brain's synapses
5. Everspin appoints a new chief financial officer
6. Yole sees STT-MRAM as the most suitable technology to start replacing DRAM in 2018
7. Avalanche Technology starts to sample 32/64 Mbit STT-MRAM chips
8. Crocus raised $21 million, has over 250 sensor customers, will break even in Q1 2016
9. Everspin raised $29 million from Global Foundries, Western Digital and others
10. Everspin announces an MRAM-based Arduino-shield evaluation module

What will be the most popular MRAM stories in 2016? We will soon post our yearly review, stay tuned!

Toshiba and SK Hynix co-developed a 4-Gbit STT-MRAM chip, and presented a prototype at IEDM 2016.

The prototype chip is made from eight 512-Mbit banks, and the cell area is equivalent to that of DRAM - at 9F2, which Hynix says is much smaller than conventional STT-MRAMs (50F2).

Samsung demonstrated an LCD display that uses a tCON chip that uses embedded 28nm pMTJ STT-MRAM memory, instead of the normally used SRAM. The MRAM device had a density of 8Mb and a 1T-1MTJ cell architecture. The cell size is 0.0364 um².

A tCON chip is a timing controller chip that processes the video signal input and processes it to generate control signal to the source & gate driver of the LCD display. The memory is used a a frame memory which stores previous frame data. Samsung prepared a test chip that contains both SRAM and MRAM memory devices to show that there is no difference between the two. SRAM replacement is a popular MRAM application.

Researchers at IMEC developed a 8nm perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (pMTJ) with 100% tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) and a magnetic coercive field up to 1,500 Oe in strength. The researchers also demonstrated integrated 1Mbit STT-MRAM 1T1MTJ arrays with pitches down to 100 nm.

IMEC says that this is the world's smallest pMTJ - which paves the way for high density stand-alone MRAM applications. The pMTJ was developed on 300mm silicon wafers in a production process that is compatible with the thermal budget of standard CMOS back-end-of-line technology.