March 2019

Researchers from Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University (NTHU)managed to use a spin current to manipulate the exchange bias in Spin-Orbit Torque memory (SOT-MRAM). The researchers say that this has been a long-time challenge in the field.

To achieve this, the researchers added a platinum layer under the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic layers of the MRAM device. The researchers patented this technique before publishing their findings.

Everspin announced its financial results for Q4 2018. Revenues in the quarter grew 21% from last year to reach $12.3 million, while total year revenues in 2018 grew 38% from 2017 to reach $49.4 million. Net loss in the quarter was $3.5 million (down from $4.4 million in Q4 2017). Net loss for the whole 2018 was $17.8 million (down from $21.1 million in 2017).

Everspin says that it has increased the production volume of its 40nm 256Mb STT-MRAM in support of its lead flash array customer. Everspin ended 2018 with with cash and cash equivalents of $23.4 million.

Samsung announced that it has started to mass produce its first embedded MRAM, made using the company's 28nm FD-SOI process. Samsung says that its eMRAM memory module offers higher performance and endurance when compared to eFlash, and can be integrated into existing chips.

Samsung details that its eMRAM is 1,000 times faster than its eFlash memory, and it does not require an erase cycle before writing data (unlike Flash memory). The voltage used is also lower - and in total eMRAM consumes 1/400 the energy compared to eFlash for the writing process. Samsung's MRAM capacity, though, is lower than its 3D Xpoint, DRAM and NAND flash.