Patent ID: 7408803

Claim:
A method for writing to magnetoresistive memory cells of an MRAM memory, the magnetoresistive memory cells having a multilayer system containing layers stacked one above another, the layers including a soft-magnetic layer, a hard-magnetic layer and a tunnel oxide layer disposed between the soft-magnetic layer and the hard-magnetic layer, which comprises the steps of: impressing write currents being in each case impressed on a respective word line and a respective bit line resulting in a superposition of magnetic fields generated by the write currents, and in each selected memory cell selected by the respective word line and the respective bit line, a magnetic field leads to a change of a magnetization direction of only the soft-magnetic layer, the write currents being impressed on the respective word line and the respective bit line causing a magnetic field produced by the superposition of only a magnetic field of the respective word line current and a magnetic field of the respective bit line current to be precisely large enough to suffice for switching the magnetization of the soft magnetic layer in the selected memory cell but small enough that neither adjacent cells nor non-selected memory cells situated on selected lines are switched, the timings of the impression of both the respective word line current and the respective bit line current being controlled to be offset to one another by a part of the switching duration of at least the word line current for rotating the magnetization direction of the soft magnetic layer writing a logic “0” and “1”, respectively, in three successive incremental angular displacement steps, wherein for writing a logic “0” that magnetization direction is rotated in three first steps in a first angular direction, and for writing a logic “1” the magnetization direction is rotated three second steps in a second inverse direction.