Toshiba announces breakthrough in new type of memory

Toshiba has developed so-called spin transfer torque magnetoresistive random access memory with a greatly reduced energy consumption compared to previously developed STT-MRAM. The memory can therefore possibly follow sram as cache memory.

Toshiba has a new prototype made of spin transfer torque magnetoresistive random access memory, or stt-ram, with the lowest energy consumption so far. Earlier prototypes from Spintech, IBM or Toshiba itself consume ten times as much energy. The consumption of the latest prototype is therefore lower than that of sram, which seems to pave the way to replace this type of memory with stt-ram.

Toshiba modeled the use of memory using what it says is a ‘highly accurate’ simulation. In this virtual test environment, an unspecified mobile chip in combination with the stt-mram consumed only one third of the energy that the chip normally consumes.

In stt-ram, a magnet is energized to change the direction of the magnetic field. The change of direction causes a change in resistance, which registers as either a 0 or a 1. One of the advantages of stt-ram is that it does not lose its charge when the power is lost. In standby mode, Toshiba’s stt-ram consumes no energy, while sram does.

Stt-mram is supposed to replace sram, but until now stt-mram consumed more energy than sram at equal speeds. This was partly because stt-ram was difficult to scale down to a smaller production process, but Toshiba would now use a process smaller than 30nm.