MRAM: Next generation memory technology

NVE granted a new MRAM patent

NVE Corporation was granted a new MRAM patent number 7,715,228, titled Cross-Point Magnetoresistive Memory.

The invention was made with U.S. Government support under a Missile Defense Agency contract and assigned to NVE. The U.S. Government has certain rights in the invention.

05/11/2010

Crocus to sample 1-Mbit MRAM at the end of 2010, pricing it at "market price"

Yesterday Crocus has announced a new CEO (Dr. Bertrand F. Cambou) and an 8 million euro investment. Last year we spoke with their previous CEO (Jean-Pierre Braun), and now Dr. Bertrand was kind enough to answer a few questions we had.

Q: The original plan was to release products towards the end of 2009. What's the new target date?
End of 2010 for sampling, mid 2011 for revenue.

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about these products?
At first it will be NV-SRAM 1Mbit. Then we will expand to a family 256Kb-4Mb. We will price it at market price.

Q: When we talked to Jean-Pierre, he estimated the applying the technology for STT-RAM (in 45-60nm) will take at least 4-5 years. What's your view on that?
In my view point the current technology has leg, and will be integrated into CMOS logic all the way to 45nm. STT-TAS will take the relay at 32nm and under within 4-5 years.

Q: Where does he see Crocus' products used in the first few years?
Beside NV-SRAM, Crocus technology should be integrated into logic for embedding memory (replacing SRAM & Flash) into MCU. There is also the opportunity to replace the fuse on SRAM based FPGA to offer re-programable FPGA.

Q: Will Crocus require another round of finance, or do you hope that you can break-even soon?
We will look at strategic corporate partners interested by Crocus technology: NRE/ advance payment on Royalties/ low dilution.....

Dr. Bertrand - thanks again for answering our questions... good luck to both you and Crocus!

05/05/2010

Crocus raised €8 million, changes CEO

Crocus announced an 8 million euro investment, and a change of CEO. The new CEO is Dr. Bertrand F. Cambou. His main task is to bring their MRAM products to the market. Crocus aims to complete the production transfer of its 130nm MRAM technology to manufacturing partner Tower Semiconductor soon.

Crocus has originally planned to start production towards the end of 2009.

05/04/2010

Researches design new frequency-controlled magnetic vortex memory

Researchers have designed a new kind of magnetic memory called frequency-controlled magnetic vortex memory. It takes advantage of magnetic vortices' ability to store binary information as positive or negative core polarities, which can be controlled by simply changing the frequency of the rotating vortex cores of the nanodots.

Magnetic Vortex Memory diagram

The concept of using magnetic nano-objects to store information for magnetic-RAM is already known, but it’s been difficult to find a mechanism to reverse the magnetization inside individual nano-objects. The researchers achieved this reversal by using microwave pulses in combination with a static magnetic field. In this scheme, large and small rotating core frequencies are associated with positive and negative core polarities, respectively. In a positive core polarity, the core is parallel to the applied magnetic field, while in a negative core polarity, the core is antiparallel to the applied magnetic field. An extremely sensitive magnetic resonance force microscope (MRFM) is used to address the resonant frequency of magnetic nanodots’ vortex core rotations, allowing the researchers to control the polarity states of individual nanodots.

04/22/2010

Everspin introduces new 16 Mbit MRAM chips

Everspin has announced a new MRAM chip (MR4A16B) with 16-megabit (Mb) density. Samples are available now, and mass-production will begin in July 2010. There are two options for the chips: commercial chips and industrial chips (that have a larger temperature range: -40°C to +85 °C). Everspin also promises to continue and deliver MRAM at increasingly higher densities.

Everspin MR4A16B

This is the first time since the MRAM chips were introduced by Freescale in 2006 that they announce higher-density chips.

The MR4A16B is a 3.3-volt, parallel I/O chip that features fast 35 ns access times with unlimited read/write cycles. Data is always non-volatile after each write for more than 20 years. In addition, MRAM is immune to soft error rates associated with cosmic rays that impact other memories. The 16Mb MRAM is organized as 1,048,576 words of 16 bits. Pin and function-compatible with asynchronous SRAM, the MR4A16B targets industrial automation, robotics, network and data storage, multi-function printers and a host of other systems traditionally limited to SRAM-based designs.

04/18/2010

New Nanomemory market report

There's a new report by CompaniesAndMarkets about Nanomemory. It analyzes the global market for nanomemory and discusses several memory technologies, including MRAM, FRAM, Ovonic Unified Memory, Holographic Memory, Nano-RAM or NRAM, Molecular Memory, and Polymer memory. Annual forecasts are provided for the period of 2010 through 2015.

04/13/2010

Japanese Researchers develop new ICs with MRAM

A group led by Professor Hideo Ohno in the Laboratory of Nanoelectronics and Spintronics, at Tohoku University is working to develop new integrated circuits using spintronics. The ICs store data in nonvolatile memory using magnetism, so their standby power can be made zero. This memory utilizes the tunnel magneto-resistance effect.