MRAM Breakthrough Looms

Fast, dense and cheap finally achieved
R. Colin Johnson, EETimes
3/7/2016 09:01 AM EST

PORTLAND, Ore.—Everybody in the memory business is trying to build a nonvolatile memory that is as fast as static random access memory (SRAM), as dense as flash and as cheap as read-only-memory (ROM). The problems with this "universal" memory (that could replace all others) has already been solved by magnetic random assess memories—according to those making MRAM.

Unfortunately, the optimization step to actually make nonvolatile MRAM faster, denser and cheaper—that MRAM makers keep promising—always seems to be three years away. Now independent researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, The Netherlands) claim to have solved the fast, dense and cheap problem with a novel new approach called "field-free magnetization reversal by spin-Hall effect and exchange bias"—or "current bending" for short.

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