October 2016

Capres A/S was established in 1999 in Denmark to develop a unique probe technology designed for in-line production monitoring in the semiconductor industry. The company, in collaboration with IBM, developed a resistivity measurement technique to characterize MTJ stacks.

Bo Svarrer Hansen, the company's CEO since 2002, was kind enough to answers a few questions we had, and share with us his views on the MRAM market and the company's measurement systems for MRAM and STT-MRAM device developers.

Q: Can you update us on Capres' current offers to the MRAM industry?

Capres customers are using our CIPTech® tools for R&D on small samples as well as volume production on 300 mm wafers. Depending on the configuration the tools measure with an in- plane or an out- of- plane magnetic field on blanket as well as patterned wafers.

STT-MRAM developer Avalanche Technology announced that volume production of its pMTJ STT-MRAM chips on 300 mm wafers will begin in early 2017. Avalanche started to sample 32Mb and 64Mb STT-MRAM chips in 2015

Avalanche has entered into a manufacturing agreement with Sony Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (SSMC) for this volume production. Avalanche targets several markets, including Storage, Automotive, IoT and embedded applications. Avalanche will offer discrete MRAM chips from 4Mb to 64Mb in size.

MRAM chip maker Everspin started trading at the NASDAQ yesterday (Oct 7) - under the ticker "MRAM". The company sold 8 million shares at $8 a share, raising $40 million (a bit lower than the expected $45 million) in the successful IPO.

At the first trading day the stock price soared to $9.1 but quickly returned to the original IPO price of $8.