Technical / Research

Green Mountain Semiconductor wins a grant from NASA to develop an MRAM-enhanced neuromorphic AI processor for space applications

US-based design house and services provider Green Mountain Semiconductor (GMS) has won a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from NASA, to develop a neuromorphic AI processor for space applications using MRAM magnetic memory.

GMS's approach involves the development of an analysis tool to optimize circuit designs for reliability and radiation resistance. This advancement will enable the use of off-the-shelf technology in space applications without the need for excessive design modifications to ensure radiation resistance.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 27,2023

Researchers demonstrate fast BiSb p-MTJ switching, to enable fast and low-power SOT-MRAM devices

Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology have successfully demonstrated fast p-MTJ switching (1 ns, compared to current switching that is >10 ns). "The researchers achieved this using the topological insulator BiSb as the SOT layer, and say the device offers a current density about 20 times smaller than typical.

The researchers say that this technology can be applied to develop p-MTJs for SOT-MRAM that will offer ultrafast operations and ultra low power consumption, while also offering higher reliability. This follows earlier work by the same group on BiSb p-MTJs.

Read the full story Posted: Sep 02,2023

A recent breakthrough in spintronics research could lead to faster and more efficient optically-controlled MRAM devices

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel have made a recent discovery that could change the face of spintronics research - the most important equation used to describe magnetization dynamics, namely the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation, also applies to the optical domain. 

Spintronics device by Professor Capua image

A spintronics device developed by Professor Capua's lab

The new discovery has relevant applications in optical magnetic recording, namely in optically-controlled MRAM technology. Manipulation of the magnetization order parameter on optical timescales is key for ultrafast spintronics, which allows for faster, energy-efficient optically-controlled MRAM technology.

Read the full story Posted: Jun 22,2023

Researchers say MnPd3 will enable a breakthrough in SOT-MRAM memory devices

Researchers from the School of Engineering at Stanford University discovered that a metallic compound called manganese palladium three MnPd3 is a promising material to build SOT-MRAM memory devices. 

The researchers say that the new material enables a breakthrough in SOT-MRAM device performance, as it is the first material that generates spin in the z-direction, rather than the y-direction as in most materials, which is a property needed in high-performance SOT-MRAM. In fact MnPd3 is able to generate spins in any orientation because its internal structure lacks the kind of crystal symmetry that would force all of the electrons into a particular orientation.

Read the full story Posted: May 10,2023

Hprobe releases a new MRAM testing module to help increase production yields

Hprobe, a developer of testing equipment for magnetic devices, announced a new addition to its product line, the RF Pulse Module. The company says that this is the commercially available testing system to both collect statistics of error rate of the memory unit cell and take a deep look into switching dynamics of resistive memories.

Hprobe IBEX WAT H3DM Light photo

Hprobe's IBEX system

Hprobe says that the RF Pulse Module is two orders of magnitude faster than existing devices and can help increase manufacturing yields. Hprobe has already begun shipping to tier-1 companies and major research institutes around the world.

Read the full story Posted: Dec 03,2022

Researchers develop sub-volt nanoscale perpendicular VC-MRAM devices

A research team from Northwestern Engineering, led by Prof. Pedram Khalili developed highly efficiency nanoscale perpendicular MRAM (pMTJ) devices that use sub-volt switching. The researcher say that this new technology can allow scaling MRAM to very high densities.

The new devices are referred to as voltage-controlled MRAM (VCM), that does not rely on current like regular MRAM devices. Most VCM devices need high switching voltage (at least 2 volts), but by using a new material structure with significantly higher sensitivity of the magnetic properties to voltage, the researchers were able to operate at less than one volt.

Read the full story Posted: Nov 14,2022

Samsung researchers update on the company's 14 nm eMRAM project

Researchers from Samsung will soon present at IEDM 2022 a new research paper that will discuss the company's latest achievements in scaling down its MRAM technology to the company's 14nm FinFET logic process.

Samsung eMRAM image

The Samsung researchers produced a stand-alone memory with a write energy requirement of 25 pJ per bit and active power requirements of 14 mW for reading and 27 mW for writing at a 54Mbyte per second data rate. The cycling  is 10^14 cycles and when scaled to a 16Mbit device, a chip would occupy 30 square millimeters.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 26,2022

ITRI joins forces with TSMC and NYCU to develop next-gen MRAM technologies

Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) announced two new MRAM collaborations. The first one is with Taiwan's TSMC, for the development of SOT-MRAM array chips. The second collaboration is with National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) to develop magnetic memory technology that can perform across a wide operating temperature range of nearly 400 degrees Celsius.

Together with TSMC, ITRI is developing low-voltage and current SOT-MRAM, that features high write efficiecny and low write voltage. ITRI says that its SOT-MRAM achieves a writing speed of 0.4 nanoseconds and a high endurance of 7 trillion reads and writes. The memory also offers a data storage lifespan of over 10 years.

Read the full story Posted: Jun 28,2022

Renesas develops 22-nm circuit technologies for embedded STT-MRAM

Renesas announced that it has developed 22-nm embedded STT-MRAM circuit technologies. Renesas developed a test 32-megabit (Mbit) chip with an embedded MRAM memory cell array that achieves 5.9-nanosecond (ns) random read access at a maximum junction temperature of 150°C, and a write throughput of 5.8-megabyte-per-second (MB/s).

To achieve this performance, Renesas developed two technologies. The first is a fast read technology employing high-precision sense amplifier circuit, utilizing capacitive coupling. The second is a fast write technology, with simultaneous write bit number optimization and shortened mode transition time.

Read the full story Posted: Jun 18,2022

Researchers demonstrate an ultra-fast and efficient laser-induced opto-MRAM device

Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and the Fert Beijing Institute of Beihang University have experimentally demonstrated a fully-functional picosecond opto-MRAM building block device, by integrating ultrafast photonics with spintronics.

The researchers used a femtosecond (fs) laser, which is the fastest stimuli commercially that enabled the device to be extremely fast - and also a thousand times more energy efficient compared to standard MRAM devices. The device is based on the femtosecond laser-induced all-optical switching (AOS) scheme in synthetic ferrimagnetic multilayers that was discovered by TU/e in 2017, integrating it with MRAM bit

Read the full story Posted: Apr 30,2022