US Patent 7372723 State save-on-power-down using GMR non-volatile elements

The semiconductor industry seeks to reduce the risk of traditional volatile storage devices with improved non-volatile storage devices. The increased demand for a significantly advanced, efficient, and non-volatile data retention technique has driven the development of integrated giant-magneto-resistive (GMR) structures. In an embodiment, a save-on-power-down circuit that may be integrated with conventional semiconductor-based computing, logic, and memory devices to retain volatile logic states and/or volatile digital information in a non-volatile manner is provided.