Engineers Develop New Energy-Efficient Computer Memory

Engineers Develop New Energy-Efficient Computer Memory Using Magnetic Materials :

By using voltage instead of an electric current, researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have made great improvements in an ultra-fast, high capacity type of computer memory known as Access Memory Random magneto-resistance, or MRAM.

Improving Memory The UCLA team, ask Merriam magneto-electric random access memory, has great potential for use in future memory chips for almost all electronic applications, such as smartphones, tablets, computers and microprocessors and data storage and solid state drives used in computers and data centers large.

Me-ram key advantage over existing technologies is that it combines low power consumption with an extremely high density, high speed read and write, and the lack of volatility - the ability to retain data when power is applied, similar to hard drives and flash memory cards, but it is much faster Me-ram.

Currently, magnetic memory is based on a technology called spin-transfer torque (STT), which uses the magnetic property of electrons - called spin - apart from its cargo. STT uses an electrical current to move electrons to write data to memory.

However, while STT is superior in many respects to the memory of competing technologies, the electrical mechanism based on actual scripts still requires a certain amount of energy, which means that heat is generated when data is written to it. Additionally, memory capacity is limited by the closing of each of the other data bits can be placed physically, a process that is limited by the current required to write information. The low bit capacity, in turn, translates into a cost per bit relatively large, which limits the application range of STT.

With Me-ram  the UCLA team has replaced the current STT voltage to write data to memory. This eliminates the need to transfer large amounts of electrons through wires and instead uses a voltage - the electrical potential difference - to change the magnetic bits and write information in memory. This has resulted in computer memory that generates much less heat, which is 10 to 1,000 times more energy efficient. And the memory can be more than five times denser, more bits of information stored in the same physical area, which also reduces the cost per bit.

The research team was led by principal investigator Kang L. Wang, Raytheon UCLA, Professor of Electrical Engineering and included the author John G. Alzate, an electrical engineering graduate student and Pedram Khalili, a research associate in electrical engineering and project director of the UCLA-DARPA research programs in nonvolatile logic.

"The ability to change voltages using nanoscale magnets is a very interesting area and the rapid growth of research in magnetism," said Khalili. "This paper presents new perspectives on issues such as how to control the direction of switching voltage pulses, how to ensure that the devices operate without external magnetic fields, and how to integrate them into devices of high density memory.

"Once I became a product," he added, "Meram advantage over competing technologies is not limited to energy consumption, but not least, can allow extremely dense MRAM. This may open up new areas of application where the low cost and high capacity are the main obstacles. "

Alzate said: "The recent announcement of the first commercial chips for STT-RAM also opens the door to Meram, as our devices share a very similar set of materials and manufacturing processes, while maintaining compatibility with current logic technology STT-RAM circuits while limiting the power and ease density. "

The research was presented on December 12 in a document called "induced voltage change of nano-scale magnetic tunnel junctions" in 2012 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco, the semiconductor industry "pre-eminent forum for reporting technological advances in the areas of semiconductor and electronic device technology. "

Me-ram called voltage controlled nano-scale structures using magnet insulating joints, which have several layers stacked one above the other, two of them composed of magnetic materials. However, while the magnetic direction of one layer is fixed, the other can be manipulated through an electric field. The devices are especially designed to be sensitive to electrical fields. When the applied electric field, resulting in tension - an electric potential difference between the two magnetic layers. This tension is increased or reduced electrons on the surface of these layers, write data bits in memory.

"Ultra-low-power spintronic devices of this type have potential implications beyond the memory industry," said Wang can enable instant new electronic systems, where memory is integrated with logic and computation, and the total elimination of standby power and greatly improving its functionality. '

The work was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) NV Logic program. Other authors include researchers from the UCLA Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Irvine Department of Physics and Astronomy, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (company Western Digital), and SINGULUS technologies from Germany.