Abstract
Over the past few years, a new era of smart connected devices has emerged in the market to enable the future world of the Internet of Things (IoT). A key requirement for IoT applications is the power consumption to allow very high autonomy in the case of battery-powered systems. Depending on the application, such devices will be most of the time in a low-power mode (sleep mode) and will wake up only when there is a task to accomplish (active mode). Emerging non-volatile memory technologies are seen as a very attractive solution to design ultra-low-power systems. Among these technologies, magnetic random access memory is a promising candidate, as it combines non-volatility, high density, reasonable latency, and low leakage. Integration of non-volatility as a new feature of memories has the great potential to allow full data retention after a complete shutdown with a fast wake-up time. This article explores the benefits of having a non-volatile processor to enable ultra-low-power IoT devices.