Bernard Dieny, professor at the Université Grenoble Alpes and researcher at SPINTEC, was the invited speaker of another IST Distinguished Lecture held on December 15th, which was part of Newton’mas.

Professor Bernard Dieny gave a lecture titled “Spin electronics: From basic concepts to applications towards a greener electronics”. He started his speech saying that “nowadays, most innovation result from the combination of different areas: electronics, optics, chemistry, biology, medicine”. According to the professor “our goal is to reveal new phenomena and to implement these phenomena in devices in order to improve system performance and to introduce new features.

The speaker shared some data that demonstrated the “exponentially increasing amount of data produced in the world”, as well as the fact that it has become “indispensable to reduce energy consumption and improve the energy efficiency of electronic circuits”.

“Non-volatile magnetic random access memories (MRAM) reduce energy consumption and accelerate communication between logic and memory”. “This is a very promising technology for all portable applications in the Internet of Things or in high performance computing, thus opening the way for more sustainable electronics”, stressed the speaker.

Professor Bernard Dieny made some conclusions, saying that “MRAM production marks the industry’s acceptance of this new hybrid technology” and “this is a very desirable and promising area at the level of research”. “MRAM technology is just beginning,” said the professor at the end of the session.