Abstract: Since the first isolation of graphene from graphite by mechanical exfoliation,atomically-thin or layered Information storage technology plays a very important role in our daily lives, especially in the current“big data”age. Due to developments in physics, information storage technologies are in a golden era. As the new star of future information storage technology,magnetic random access memories have attracted much attention due to their low power consumption and fast operation speed, thus they are believed to have a bright future. The central challenge is to read and write the information in a basic magnetic unit. Recently it has been shown that the spin-orbit torque, a result of the spin-orbit coupling, can manipulate the magnetization effectively, so this has generated great interest in the fields of both condensed matter physics and electronics. The basic physics is being investigated worldwide, including the phenomena of spin-orbit coupling, the spin Hall effect, and the Edelstein effect. This paper reviews recent important results regarding the spin orbit torque, focusing on heavy metals, two dimensional materials/interfaces, topological insulators, and antiferromagnetic materials. At the end, future prospects and potential industrial applications are discussed.