Magnetic RAM (MRAM) may have the potential to replace DRAM and SRAM in many applications, but even the sole vendor shipping the nonvolatile memory (NVM) expects the transition to take time.

A Coughlin Associates report released this spring suggested MRAM was poised for a 50% compound annual growth rate, with MRAM and STT-MRAM revenue increasing from about $190 million in 2013 to $2.1 billion in 2019.

Tom Coughlin, the firm's founder, said one of the appealing aspects of MRAM is its compatibility with CMOS processes. Also, because the processes are mature, it makes integration less daunting than the transition to 3D NAND. He said the evolution of MRAM is likely to follow that of flash—gaining traction in niche applications before it gets widespread adoption as costs go down and density improves. STT-MRAM in particular offers some advantages in terms of read/write and endurance, he said.

In an email interview, Gartner analyst Brady Wang said MRAM is finding use as a cache in SSDs, but its density is still too low, and it is generally used in industrial applications.

MRAM does have advantages over DRAM in that it's non-volatile. Like NOR and NAND flash, he said, STT-MRAM retains data without continuous external power supplies, and it consumes less power. It can also scale better than SRAM because of its simple structure, which allows for increased shrinkage and potentially lower manufacturing costs.

In comparison with NAND flash, Wang said, STT-MRAM can switch between storing zeroes and ones without an intermediate erasing step, which is essential in flash memory and increases write latency. This makes designing STT-MRAM controllers much easier than designing NAND flash controllers.

Wang said Everspin Technologies is the only vendor shipping stand-alone MRAM chips, with a current maximum density of 64 Mb. Densities of 128 Mb or even 1 Gb could be achieved in the next two years, with 1 Gb making MRAM suitable for use in consumer applications.

By: DocMemory
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