Researchers at the Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics and Microelectronics (LIRMM), in France, say they have developed an MRAM-based FPGA circuit.
They use Thermally Assisted Switching (TAS)-MRAM with a small current for heating the Magnetic Junction Tunnel, allowing a higher sensitivity to magnetic fields. The magnetic field is induced by a current line above or below the junction depending on the technology.
The possibility to stack the MRAM over the CMOS logic in a single chip and to store permanently without power the configurations in Non-Volatile Magnetic FPGAs (NVM-FPGA) dramatically simplifies the system level design and integration into the final product. NVM-FPGAs do not require configuration loading at power-up or brown-out detection strategies in power glitch situations. No need to load the FPGA from the MCU at power-on and no additional power management circuitry to source, layout, debug and test.