F2: Memory trends: From big data to wearable devices

Abstract

Memory continues to be a critical element in the full range of VLSI applications from big data to mobile applications to wearable devices. Recent trends, including process technology scaling limits, new memory applications, and evolving high-performance and low-power requirements, have driven the development of emerging memories. As both discrete and embedded memory scaling becomes ever more challenging, there is a widespread effort to look for alternative memory technologies to replace the entrenched SRAM, DRAM, or Flash. This forum brings together systems designers to discuss memory needs for future applications and memory designers to describe the latest developments in emerging and next generation memories. The first three speakers summarize memory requirements from a system perspective to cover a broad range of applications, including servers, data-centric computing, clients, notebooks, tablets, watches, glasses, and thermostats. The fourth speaker describes general design challenges for emerging memory in embedded systems to bridge to the second half of the program, which considers specific memory technologies. Two speakers will then present the challenges and solutions for Flash and DRAM scaling while the last two speakers will highlight the latest developments in MRAM and RRAM.