Crocus and SMIC to develop and produce MLU chips for automotive applications

Crocus signed a technology development and wafer manufacturing agreement with China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC). The two companies will develop high-temperature Magnetic Logic Unit (MLU) technology targeted at automotive applications. The base wafer processing will be done by SMIC and these wafers will be further processed by Crocus at a facility that has yet to be built in Russia.

In addition the MLU technology could be licensed to SMIC for use in embedded chip applications and the two companies plan to market jointly smart cards made using TAS MLU and MRAM technology.

Crocus recently announced a $125 million investment by RUSNANO. They said that this investment will be used to build an MRAM chip fab in Russia, as mentioned above.