June 2009

Crocus announced today that Israeli Tower fab will manufacture their next-gen MRAM chips. Tower has an exclusive agreement to make the MRAM chips at their 200mm Fab2 facility. Tower has also invested 1.25$ at Crocus.

Crocus aims to start making the chips towards the end of 2009.

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. We have talked to Crocus' CEO, back in March 2009.

A couple of days ago we reported that NEC are working towards perpendicular MRAM using 2T1MTJ... now we have some more info, thanks to TechOn.

NEC and NEC Electronics employed a new method called "spin torque domain wall displacement write method" to reduce write current and realize microfabrication at the same time. In fact, they aim to reduce the current by as much as 90%. They were also able to increase speed to 500Mhz. This technology is not 'new', it was announced in 2007, but now they have a test chip ready.

NEC announced that they have developed the world's first STT-MRAM with current-induced domain wall motion using perpendicular magnetic anisotropy material. Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy enables a cell to carry out the current-induced domain wall motion writing method using spin torque at a low current, which leads to easy scaling down of cell size and creates suitable conditions for next generation system LSI.

The newly developed current-induced domain wall motion writing method, using spin torque and perpendicular magnetization material, is capable of reducing current while writing for a scaled down cell beyond the 55 nanometer process.