The 1st prize in Montpellier University Creativity contest (january 2006) has been awarded to Nicolas Bruchon (LIRMM PhD student in microelectronics) for his scientific project "Design of a run time reconfigurable circuit based on non volatile memories".

Configuration memory of programmable devices determines the function realized by the circuit. Nowadays, this memory is usually volatile (i.e. information is lost when power is shut down). Programming time and power consumption upon start up are the main drawbacks of todays programmable devices. In order to avoid these problems, a circuit using non volatile magnetic memory has been developed. Moreover, despite those devices are not continuously processing data they permanently consume power. Thanks to non volatile memory, it can be powered down for saving energy and instantaneously ready for resuming processing when power is restored. Such a memory also eases run-time reconfiguration providing more flexibility to the circuit for adapting itself to the environment.