Spintronic memory technology: from high-capacity hard drives to high-performance magnetic memories

Spintronics, which utilizes the electron spin as an information carrier, offers key advantages such as non-volatility, low power consumption, and high reliability, making it an emerging technology in the post-Moore era. This article provides an overview of spintronic memory technologies. We trace back from high-capacity hard disk drives to high-performance magnetic memories, such as spin-transfer torque and spin-orbit torque. In this context, we focus on next-generation ultrafast spintronic memories research, which is enabled by magneto-optoelectronic integration. We further examine the potential of all-optical switching for spintronic memory chips. As a perspective, spintronics is expected to empower post-Moore chip evolution, and to provide a key foundation for computing-in-memory architectures.