September 2020

pMTJ STT-MRAM developer Avalanche Technology announced that its new industrial-grade Serial (SPI) P-SRAM (Persistent SRAM) memory devices are now available. The Serial (SPI) memory devices are designed to be drop-in replacements to Cypress F-RAM and Everspin Toggle MRAM memory products.

The Series (SPI) series supports up to 50MHz clock rate in 1Mb and 4Mb density options, in two packages - 8-pin SOIC and 8-pin WSON. These use Avalanche's 40nm pMTJ STT-MRAM chips.

A team of researchers from the National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan have discovered that by adding a layer of platinum only a few nanometers thick, one can switch the pinned magnetic moments at MRAM cells at will. This was never achieved before, and can lead to faster and more efficient MRAM devices.

The platinum layer is placed between the two layers of the MRAM device - the upper layer, a freely flipping magnet used for data computation and the bottom layer that consists of a fixed magnet, responsible for data storage. Due to spin-orbit interactions, the electric current drives the collective motion of electron spins first. The spin current then switches the pinned magnetic moment effectively and precisely.

SOT-MRAM developer Antaios raised $11 million from VCs and Applied Ventures, to accelerate its next-generation memory development and develop new strategic partnerships.

SOT-MRAM devices feature switching of the free magnetic layer done by injecting an in-plane current in an adjacent SOT layer, unlike STT-MRAM where the current is injected perpendicularly into the magnetic tunnel junction and the read and write operation is performed through the same path.