March 2009

Crocus Technology announced two new patent grants by the US Patent and Trademark Office and the French Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle (INPI).

The new patents cover use in specialized memory chips known as Content Addressable Memories (CAM), opening the way to denser, faster and less power-hungry CAM, as well as innovative developments in the physics, materials, and manufacturing of MRAM chips with high data stability.  Commercialization of these technologies holds the promise of low cost, advanced technology MRAM to be used in applications ranging from mobile phones and disk drives to personal computers and network routers.

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Everspin Technologies, the global leader in MRAM and integrated magnetic products, has greatly expanded its worldwide sales network in response to the growing interest in MRAM and the rapid increase in customer design activity incorporating its products.

“We have an expanding global base of customers in storage, industrial automation, communication, consumer, gaming and avionics markets,” said Saied Tehrani, chief operating officer for Everspin Technologies.

The French Montpellier Laboratory has developed a new FPGA architecture based on TAS-MRAM technology.

The use of MRAMs helps to overcome the drawbacks of classical SRAM based FPGAs without significant speed penalty. Besides its advantage that lies in power saving during the standby mode, it also benefits to the configuration time reduction since there is no need to load the configuration data from an external non-volatile memory as is usual in SRAM based FPGAs. Furthermore, during the FPGA circuit operation, the magnetic tunneling junctions can be written which allows a dynamic configuration and further increases the flexibility and performances of FPGA circuits based on the MRAM.

Jean-Pierre Braun, the CEO of Crocus technologies, is visiting Israel these days, and I had the good chance of meeting him. Crocus' technology is based on work done by the French Spintec research center. In fact they get an exclusive access to Spintec MRAM related research and patents for the next 15 years.

Crocus' technology

Crocus' basic technology is based on Field-Induced MRAM (Toggle MRAM), which is in some ways similar to Everspin's technology (or 1st generation MRAM). Historically, Field-Induced MRAM is very hard to scale, and has stability and retention problems. Crocus aims to solve all this using a thermally activated magnetic latch. They call their technology Thermally Assisted Switching or TAS. Basically this means that the latch helps the cell retain the memory value very well. It can also scale quite well. This also (theoretically) will allow them to pack more than 1 bit per cell... some day.

Jean-Pierre says that many companies are doing 'Thermal MRAM' - which only means heating the material for easier handling. But Crocus technology is very different - because of the use of this magnetic latch, not just heat by itself.

Crocus plans

Crocus already has a 'small' (few KBits) working sample of their memory, and towards the end of 2009 they will hopefully get a real product out. I can't say much yet, but this product will have a higher-density than Everspin's products (currently 4Mbit), smaller size and will also be considerably cheaper. This is great news, and hopefully they'll be able to pull it off. Even though the largest MRAM market is for embedded memory, the first Crocus product will be stand-alone.

Crocus financials

Obviously these are hard times - especially for start ups and companies that are still losing money. Crocus has already raised around US$30M, but they aim to break-even in 2010 or 2011. They will still require another round of investment, but hopefully a small one.

Future plans

Crocus are also working on STT-RAM. Jean-Pierre thinks that the best way forward is Perpendicular STT-RAM, which is currently lead by Toshiba. Crocus' MRAM road map looks like this -

• 130-90ns : Field induced TAS MRAM
• 65-45ns : STT-MRAM
•  

But volume production of STT-RAM is still way off, probably "at least 4-5 years" away according to Jean-Pierre.

Will MRAM ever be the 'Universal Memory'?

In the happy days of 2004, MRAM was hyped as the universal memory - being able to replace your SRAM, DRAM, FLASH and H/D - all in one chip. This is great - but not realistic - at least Jean-Pierre does not believe it. It will require some serious technological breakthrough to compete in particular with NAND Flash, and he just can't see it happen anytime soon. Better to focus on 'niche' memory markets that will take full advantage of the specifics of MRAM - infinite endurance and fast write & read cycles, reliability, small die size and low memory requirements. I'm also quite tired of the old MRAM buzz and hype, and hopefully Crocus and other companies are more sober today and this might actually lead to commercial products. Good luck!