ICE Seminar « Circuit design perspective of foundry announced MRAM » (Hao CAI)

Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is a novel technology of non-volatile random-access memory, developed in the eighties, based on the change of state of the spin of the electron, notably through tunneling (quantum) effect. MRAMs are often quoted as an « ideal » technology, combining fast switching, high data throughput and non volatile character with low energy consumption. Still, it hasn’t yet found widespread use, due to the competion with more conventional technologies such as flash RAM and DRAM semiconductor memories.

However, foundries announced the possibility of integration of MRAMs with traditional bulk CMOS devices on – fully depleted – silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) and potential FinFET processes, which are advanced technologies for (high performance / low consumption) silicon processors. Such an integration has the potential to open vast avenues of development to improve the penetration of these combined technologies in a large number of applications.

The talk will show the development of MRAM and other non-volatile memories (ReRAM, FeRAM), as well as the fundamental circuits used in NVM macros. The state-of-the-art circuit design techniques for ultra low-power, energy efficient non-volatile memory will be discussed. The design challenges involved in the further development of non-volatile memory will, in particular, be highlighted, e.g., nvFlip-flop, nvSRAM, and in-memory computing.

Speaker Bio

Hao Cai received the master degree from Lund University, Sweden, in 2009 and Ph.D. degree from Télécom Paristech, France, in 2013. From 2011 to 2014, he was involved in the European EUREKA program CATRENE-RELY for high reliability nanoscale integrated circuits and systems. He is currently an Associate Professor with the National ASIC System Engineering Center, Southeast University, Nanjing, China. He has authored or co-authored over 80 scientific papers in circuit and systems (CAS), as well as solid-state circuits (SSC) domains such as IEEE JSSC, TCAS-1, TCAS-2, TED and TNANO.

Dr. Cai is currently a technical committee (TC) member with IEEE Circuits and Systems society. He received the CAS Darlington best paper award nomination in 2019. He received several best paper awards in GLSVLSI, APCCAS and ESREF. Since 2019, he is the principal investigator of TFET-VLSI under ‘National Key Research and Development Program of China’, he also takes responsibility of two MRAM projects under ‘National Natural Science Foundation of China’.