Texas Engineers teamed up with the world’s largest semiconductor foundry to fabricate and test an emerging memory technology that could help deal with the increasing energy demand of artificial intelligence.

Together with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), researchers tested SOT-MRAM, a type of memory that can retain information even when power is off. It uses magnetic properties, making it faster while also consuming less energy than other memory technologies.

Texas Engineers will develop next-generation semiconductor technologies as part of a collaboration of the National Science Foundation and leading industry companies.

NSF and partners Ericsson, Intel Corporation, Micron Technology and Samsung awarded $42.4 million for its Future of Semiconductors (NSF FuSe2) competition. Four of the 23 projects picked for this program were either led or supported by faculty members from the Cockrell School.