AsianScientist (Jan. 4, 2015) – Micron Technology, Inc., and Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)’s Data Storage Institute (DSI) will be extending their collaboration on the development of spin-transfer torque magnetic random access memory (STT-MRAM), a promising alternative non-volatile memory technology, for another three years.
The flagship collaboration, first begun in 2011, has brought together researchers from Micron and A*STAR DSI to co-develop high density STT-MRAM devices.
With its capabilities and know-how in STT-MRAM, A*STAR DSI has played a significant role in helping Micron establish a technology center in Singapore. As part of the initial cooperation, DSI also provided the necessary expertise and innovation to achieve successful fabrication of STT-MRAM devices.
Building on their previous successful collaboration, the renewal of the research collaboration will focus on developing low-power consumption switching mechanisms and improving the performance of STT-MRAM devices.
With the rising interest in STT-MRAM across different industries, the extension of the collaboration will bring the technology closer to commercial maturity.
Non-volatile memory is becoming more important in the semiconductor memory market, playing a critical role in enabling mobile storage applications and solid state drives. Low power consumption STT-MRAM technology has the potential to become a universal memory due to qualities such as high data retention and high speed to address the technology scaling roadmap challenges of volatile memory. It also has the ability to boost the performance of data centers and the cloud.
Dr. Pantelis Alexopoulos, Executive Director of DSI, said, “Over the first three years of our collaboration, DSI has played a direct role in co-innovating with Micron and has proven its relevance as a key centre for the development of STT-MRAM The renewal of the contract is a testimony to the hard work and the quality of both of our teams. We are proud to be a partner of Micron on their path towards the development of STT-MRAM.”
Dr. Tan Geok Leng, Executive Director of A*STAR’s Science and Engineering Research Council, said, “In addition to STT-MRAM’s emergence as a promising class of non-volatile memory, it has the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in computing architecture with significant performance improvement and energy savings when applied to data storage solutions.”
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Source: A*STAR.
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