NEC'S CONTENT ADDRESSABLE MEMORY THAT STORES DATA WITHOUT USING POWER

SINGAPORE, June 13 (Bernama) -- NEC Corp and Tohoku University Monday announced the development of the world’s first content addressable memory (CAM) that both maintains the same high operation speed and non-volatile operation as existing circuits when processing and storing data on a circuit while power is off.

In a statement Monday, NEC said the new CAM was a part of spintronics logic integrated circuit technologies that used the negative properties of electrons together with the spin magnetic moment.

"The new CAM uses the vertical magnetisation of vertical domain wall elements in reaction to magnetic substances in order to enable data that are processing within the CAM to be stored on a circuit without using power.

"This contrasts to conventional technologies that required data to be stored within memory," it said.

It said as a result, data could be saved on circuits even when power was cut from the CAM.

The statement said the use of the new CAM in combination with existing non-volatile memory was related to greater non-volatility of computer processing unit for electronics and other storage devices.

"It enables the development of electronics that start instantly and consume zero electricity while in standby mode," it said.
-- BERNAMA