Mustafa Pinarbasi
CTO and Sr. Vice President of Magnetics Technology,Spin Transfer Technologies

Biography

Mustafa Pinarbasi is a pioneer and innovator in magnetic thin films. Before joining Spin Transfer Technologies in 2013, Dr. Pinarbasi held technology leadership positions at SoloPower, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST) and IBM. His accomplishments at IBM include pioneering the adoption of ion beam sputtering technology and development of the giant magneto-resistance (GMR) sensor used in the first GMR-based hard disk drives; leading the development of tunneling magneto-resistance (TMR) read head processing used in hard disk drive products at Hitachi GST, and the development of flexible and light weight solar panels while CTO at Solopower. Dr. Pinarbasi holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an inventor with over 190 U.S. patents, has authored or co-authored over 30 scientific publications and has received numerous industry awards.

Abstract

After 50 years from the inventions of SRAM and DRAM and 30 from that of NAND Flash, the semiconductor memory industry is in the throes of disruption. NAND has already made the transition to 3-D while DRAM approaches its scaling brick wall.

Attempts are being made to fill the latency/persistence/cost “gap” in the memory hierarchy between DRAM and NAND with new types of solid-state memories.

This presentation will explain how MRAM will migrate from its existing emerging niche of embedded nonvolatile memory to form a fundamentally important technology for Persistent Memory not only in the “gap” but also as SRAM replacement.

The keys to this migration involve both important magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) and circuit/system design innovations without which MRAM would languish in its existing memory niche.