Basics of Nonvolatile Memories: MRAM, RRAM, and PRAM Slides and Transcript

Abstract: NAND Flash and eFlash have been the workhorse of memory hierarchy for standalone storage and embedded non-volatile memories (NVMs), respectively. But with the ever increasing need for memory capacity and bandwidth, due to new applications in graphics, AI and IoT, device and circuit designers have been heavily investigating alternative memories to fill the need. When it comes storage, there is a big gap between DRAM and NAND in terms of density and speed, which could justify a new memory type. When it comes to NVM, growing IoT requires better performance and more power efficient NVM than eFlash, which can be scaled to 1xnm technologies. This tutorial will talk about the basic characteristics, circuits and system designs for emerging non-volatile memories such as MRAM, RRAM, and PRAM. The tutorial will present the details of MRAM and RRAM, as well as a comparison of these memory devices, and the applications they target.