MagnetoresistiveRam
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Toshiba goes perpendicular to solve MRAM's power issues, rethink cache memory
As much of a breakthrough as magnetoresistive RAM might be for its ability to retain data while powered off, its susceptibility to leak currents while turned on has made it impractical as a replacement for cache-oriented memory like SRAM. Toshiba's new approach could almost literally turn the situation on its head. By magnetizing spin torque MRAM (ST-MRAM) in a direction perpendicular to the magnetic layer, Toshiba cuts off the avenues for leaks without sacrificing speed. The switch away from in-plane magnetization is an upside for the memory as a whole -- it shrinks normally large elements to below 30 nanometers and cuts the overall power draw of MRAM by about 90 percent. While there's no timetable for when we'll see such cache in a shipping product, Toshiba expects it to reach mobile processors, where even slight power savings can make a big difference. If our next smartphone or tablet survives that much longer on battery through memory we can't even see, we'll know who to thank.
Everspin throws first ST-MRAM chips down, launches commercial spin-torque memory era
Who says scientific breakthroughs never amount to anything? Everspin has followed up on research developed by IBM, TDK and German researchers years back and released the first commercial spin-torque magnotoresistive RAM (ST-MRAM) onto the market. The technology works by taking advantage of electron "spin" to store data in a magnetic, rather than electronic state, providing non-volatile memory that doesn't wear out. The company said the first chips were about 50 times the cost of flash memory by size, but where a typical NAND module can perform about 800 iOPS, ST-MRAM is capable of 400,000 -- making it ideal for SSD caching and other demanding applications. Everspin has started shipping working samples of the 64Mb DIMMS in a DDR3 form factor, saying that future versions will scale to gigabyte capacities and faster speeds -- keeping Moore's Law hurtling inexorably forward. Check the PR after the break for the company's spin on it.
New research aims to speed up MRAM in a future you'll never live to see (probably)
A month after German researchers announced their latest breakthrough in MRAM design, physicists at Japan's Tohoku University now say that it is possible to use an electric field to manipulate the magnetic domains in a semiconductor -- eliminating moving magnets from MRAM completely. MRAM designed using the electric field method would be faster -- and would use less energy -- than earlier variations on the technology, thus making our lives easier and generally more awesome. Of course, none of this stuff actually exists yet, and it's still got fierce competition from competing ideas (like IBM's racetrack memory), so for now we'll just have to stay content with the four 128k chips we scraped out of our old XT.[Via MRAM Info]
German researchers devise means for even faster MRAM
We've already heard plenty of claims about how MRAM (or magnetoresistive RAM) would leave traditional memory in the dust, but a group of German researchers are now saying that they've found a way to blow past the MRAM that IBM and others are just now putting the finishing touches on. Their big breakthrough, it seems, is a new spin-torque system that can flip the magnetic field storing the 1s and 0s with only a single "wobble" being allowed to take place. That's as opposed to the magnetic field in current MRAM systems, which requires some time to settle into place each time its flipped. There's apparently still some work to be done before we see any actual MRAM using this new system, however, as the current used by the German device too electrically dense to be supplied by the transistors used in MRAM circuits, although they seem confident that they can overcome that pesky little problem.
