Future Nonvolatile Memory Technologies: Challenges and Applications

Emerging Nonvolatile Memory (NVM) devices is a technology advancement in the area of memories, which is giving a tough challenge to the existing silicon based application. This paper focuses mainly on the present and various emerging memory technologies, in order to explore its research domains. FeRAM (ferroelectric random-access memory), PCM (phase-change memory), MRAM (magnetic random-access memory) and RRAM (resistive random-access memory) are some of the types of memories taken into consideration for this purpose, with each having its own pros and cons. The performance comparison illustrates the complexity to identify the "universal memory" among the four. In this article, initially we revisit the conventional memory technologies and later part we will discuss more on the advanced studies of NVM memory technologies.