A French collaboration has claimed the tape out of world’s first MRAM-based FPGA.
Embedded IP developer Menta has been working with the Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics and Microelectronics of Montpellier (LIRMM) to demonstrate the MRAM-based FPGA.
Professor Lionel Torres, in charge of the MRAM design project at LIRMM, claimed that “MRAM-based FPGA proposes better versatility with partial or dynamic reconfigurability capabilities, instant on/off total or partial energy saving”.
The French Montpellier Laboratory has developed the FPGA architecture based on MRAM technology developed by French research group CEA-LETI and Crocus Technology.
Magneto-resistive memory (MRAM) is being developed as a base technology for FPGAs because it has the potential to offer the access speed of SRAM with a lower power non-volatile memory than flash for programmable devices.
MRAM is that it uses electron spin to store information, a process often referred to as spintronics.
A feature of MRAM-based FPGAs is that the technology’s magnetic tunnelling junctions can be dynamically re-configured.
This first test chip is based on Menta’s FPGA IP and it is manufactured in a 130nm CMOS process with magnetic junction in 120nm and provides capacity of 1,444 LUT4, equivalent to around 20,000 logic gates.
According to Laurent Rougé, Menta founder and CEO, the use of MRAM technology will lead to “high-density non-volatile FPGA based on leading edge CMOS technology nodes, unlike traditional Flash-based approaches only available on mature CMOS processes.”
EverSpin, a US-based spin out of Freescale Semiconductor has been manufacturing MRAM devices for more than three years.
It takes standard CMOS logic wafers and uses a machine from the hard disk drive industry to deposit magnetic material and connect the transistors.