New Speed Record for Magnetic Memories
August 19, 2008 | Source: KurzweilAI
An experiment carried out at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) has realized spin-torque switching of a nanomagnet as fast as the fundamental speed limit allows.
Using this “ballistic switching,” future MRAMs (Magnetic Random Access Memory) magnetic memories could be programmed by current pulses shorter than 1 nanosecond (compared to 10 nanoseconds with current MRAM prototypes), corresponding to write clock rates well above 1 GHz, thus allowing it to operate as fast as the fastest non-volatile memories.