InMRAM: Introductory course on Magnetic Random Access Memories for microelectronics students and engineers

Magnetic Random Access Memories (MRAM) interest is growing fast in the microelectronics industry. Commercial MRAM products already exist and all major industrial players have launched large R&D efforts to bring Spin Transfer Torque MRAM to production. The principle goal is to replace part of the memory hierarchy (in particular DRAM) by MRAM below the 20nm node. Interest in bringing non-volatile elements closer to the logic is also growing, in order to improve the performance of electronic circuits by increasing the bandwidth between logic and memory and reducing the power consumption. Despite this rising interest, very few microelectronics engineers have a background in magnetism and even more in spinelectronics so that it is very difficult for them to get into this emerging field. Magnetism and microelectronics communities have worked separately so far. We are convinced it is time to develop more relationships between these two communities through joint symposia, workshops, conferences, as well as to introduce some courses in magnetism and spinelectronics in the education of young microelectronics engineers. In this context, SPINTEC, a French lab associated to CEA/CNRS/Grenoble University, started organizing last year an annual Introductory Course on MRAM (InMRAM) for students, engineers and researchers having no or little background in magnetism. The second edition will take place in Grenoble from 2nd to 4th July 2014.