May 2011

Physicists from the University of Tokyo in Japan managed to turn a semiconductor magnetic using a modest voltage (4V) - at room temperature. Up until now, you had to use very low temperature and a large voltage to achieve that. The idea is to incorporate an electrochemical cell into a field-effect transistor.

The team say that this could lead to more energy efficient MRAM chips - as you won't need to apply current when writing data.

Everspin said that they see rapid growth in MRAM sales, and the company expects to sell over 3.5 million MRAM chips in 2011. The company sold their millionth MRAM chip in 3Q 2010, and since then sold another million.

Everspin expects the growth to continue at the same pace in 2012 - as they scored several new design wins.

A couple of weeks ago we reported that Crocus have successfully developed their 2nd generation MRAM products. It was rumored that Crocus will produce these chips in Russia, and today RusNano confirmed the story. The Russian state-owned investment group will invest $64 million to build an MRAM chip fab in Russia and further $55m will be invested in Crocus, which will control 51% of the joint venture (called Crocus Nano Electronics). They will begin mass producing MRAM chips in 2013.