It’s interesting, on the one hand, to see how various niche approaches have developed and the strengths and weaknesses they offer compared with the “typical” approach. On the other, these alternative, niche technologies are typically niches for a reason. The reasons vary depending on the technology, but they’re typically defined by one or more weaknesses that keep them from supplanting the more mainstream method. True breakthroughs that upend the competitive situation are rare — but if Spin Transfer Technologies (STT) is telling the truth, that’s exactly what it’s brought to market.
Historically, magnetoresistive RAM has offered excellent performance, data retention, and endurance — just not all at the same time. At top speed, MRAM is nearly on par with SRAM as far as performance — but the write currents required to sustain these speeds degrade the memory itself, leading to unacceptably short lifespans. Higher write currents are positively correlated with better data retention, but also lead to high power consumption. This has been a substantially limiting factor on adoption of the standard — it’s historically been hard to find mainstream compute scenarios where MRAM offered an acceptable alternative to SRAM when it comes to CPU caches, even though it has other theoretical density and power consumption advantages that could make it a good fit for these markets.
Today, STT is announcing a new breakthrough the company dubs Precessional Spin Current. STT claims this new approach will increase spin-torque efficiency of an MRAM device by 40-70 percent, allowing for retention times that are as much as 10,000x higher than before. A data retention of an hour is now over a year according to this new method — while simultaneously reducing the write current. Here’s how the company describes it:
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