NEC

NEC and Tohoku's University have jointly developed a new spintronics-based logic prototype chip specifically aimed towards text search systems. Early testing suggest that this new chip has drastically reduced power consumption - 1% or even less compared to conventional systems (DRAM and CPU). This significant reduction was achieved due to the non-volatility of the spintronic circuit which only requires power to necessary circuit blocks and does not require any standby power.

NEC and Tohoku developed new multi-functional CAM cells for text-search logic. The new CAM cells are able to avoid searching for long index texts when searching for short lengths of text within a large amount of index data. This was achieved by setting up combinations (patterns) of input signals that represent long texts. This enables circuits to detect when a long text is input, and to avoid any further unnecessary operations.

Tohoku University and NEC developed new "zero standby power" Spintronics logic ICs. They actually developed a library that establishes automatic design flow of nonvolatile logic-in-memory integrated circuits. Using this library they managed to design and make a prototype image processing chip that reduces "unnecessary power consumption" by up to 75%.

This new chip uses 25 processors, but by running only the needed processors for each operation and turning off the power for the unused ones, the power consumption is reduced. NEC says that the new library can be used in addition to existing design tools and will enable large-scale logic-in memory integrated circuits, even without expertise in circuit design or Spintronics technology.

NEC and Tohoku University have developed a new technology that aims to improving the reliability of spintronics logic integrated circuits. This could lead to devices that have a standby power of zero. They have verified this new technology on a prototype chip.

NEC and Tohoku's new device structure connects spin elements in a series, which prevents power consumption from increasing and prevents the area of the circuit from becoming larger. These highly reliable circuit components also support automatic placement and wiring, which means that highly reliable non-volatile logic integrated circuits can be designed even without expertise in spintronics technology.