Progress of emerging non-volatile memory technologies in industry

This prospective and performance summary provides a view on the state of the art of emerging non-volatile memory (eNVM) in the semiconductor industry. The overarching aim is to inform academic researchers of the status of these technologies in industry, so as to help direct the right academic research questions for future materials and device development. eNVM already have a strong foothold in the semiconductor industry with the main target of replacing embedded flash memory, and soon possibly DRAM and SRAM, i.e. replacing conventional memory. Magnetic and resistive memory are the current frontrunners among eNVM for embedded flash replacement and they are very advanced in this, which poses high demands on future academic research for eNVM for this purpose. Phase-change and ferroelectric memory are less available as commercially available products. The use of eNVM for new forms of artificial intelligence hardware is a much more open field for future academic research.