EverSpin

Everspin issued a PR today announcing a 300% growth in product shipment in 2011 - with 250 new design wins. Everspin actually revealed this information last week at CES. Everspin says that the enterprise storage, server and networking segment was the fastest growing segment during the year (Everspin's "traditinal" markets are the industrial, energy and automotive and transportation markets).

The company further revealed that a number of leading vendors in this segment are using MRAM for critical data storage in RAID systems, servers and routers. Both Dell and LSI are using Everspin's chips in their RAID controllers.

Everspin had a presentation at CES 2012, in which they gave some interesting new details. The company has shipped over 4 million MRAM chips to date, and they expect to ship over 5 million in 2012 (this is based on design wins in 2011). They have over 300 customers and over 250 design wins. Everspin further says that currently there are over 100 MRAM products on the market.

You can view the entire slide show here

NVE filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Everspin Technologies in the US. NVE claims that Everspin infringes three NVE MRAM patents. NVE seeks an injunction for Everspin to cease using NVE?s patented technology and provide compensation for damages caused by the infringement.

Everspin was spun-off Freescale, which was spun-off from Motorola, which was an NVE licensee. Back in 2006, when Freescale announced the first MRAM products, NVE tried to negotiate an agreement with them, it seems that after 5 and a half years the company decided to resort to litigation after all. Here's what Daniel Baker (NVE's CEO) said back then: "Based on a preliminary analysis, we believe Freescale's MRAM comes within the scope of claims in a number of NVE patents. We hope to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement with Freescale to give them access to NVE intellectual property without having to resort to litigation"

Everspin is gearing up to introduce their upcoming STT-MRAM products in 2012, and the company announced that they have partnered with Cadence to provide ;memory model verification IP for these products. The new memory models are already available as part of the Cadence Verification IP Catalog. Everspin says they are working with several partners to ensure design-in tools are available as well.

STT-MRAM requires less current to write info into the memory cell, which leads to higher densities. Everspin's current highest-density Toggle-MRAM product is a 16Mb chip, and we expect their STT-MRAM products to be much higher in density, which will open new markets and applications.

Mouser Electronics announced it will start distributing Everspin's MRAM products worldwide. Mouser has 17 global support locations and has over 2 million "orderable part numbers" in their catalog. The Everspin-Mouser agreement was signed back in may 2011, but it seems that now Mouser will indeed start offering MRAM chips.

Kontron announces a new AdvancedMC (AMC) processor module, the AM4120. It has a 1.2Ghz QorQI P2020 Freescale processor, 2GB or 4GB of DDR3 SDRAM, four SERDES lines, three Ethernet channels (gigabit). It also includes 128KB or 512KB of MRAM memory.

via LinuxForDevices

Digikey, an electronic conponents distributer now lists Everspin's MR2A16 4Mb MRAM chips. Prices range from $30.5 down to $20.98 (if you buy 500 or more units). 

EverSpin MR2A16 Chips