Everspin Technologies announced its preliminary Q4 2020 financial results. Total revenues were $10 million, down from $10.1 million in Q3 and up from $9.7 million in Q4 2019. Net loss int he quarter was $1.6 million, but the company generated $0.6 million in cash flow - Everspin's second consecutive positive cash flow from operations quarter.

Looking at FY2020, Everspin's revenues increased 12.1% to $42 million. At the end of the year, Everspin had $14.6 million in cash and equivalents. In Q4 2020, the company also received its first royalty revenue from GF for embedded 22FDX process MRAM.

IBM announced that during the 2020 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2020), that is now being held virtually, its researchers will reveal the first 14 nm node STT-MRAM. IBM says that efficient and high-performance STT-MRAM systems will help to address memory-compute bottlenecks in hybrid cloud systems.

IBM says that the 14 nm node embedded MRAM which will be revealed is the most advanced MRAM demonstrated to date. It features circuit design and process technology that could soon enable system designers to replace SRAM with twice the amount of MRAM in last-level CPU cache.

Everspin Technologies announced its Q3 2020 financial results, with revenues of $10.1 million, up 10% from Q3 2019 ($9.2 million) but down $14% from Q2 2020 ($11.8 million). The company's net less was $3.9 million.

Looking at the balance sheet, Everspin reports a cash flow of $1 million in the quarter - this was the first quarter ever for Everspin to have a positive cash flow.

High-performance STT-MRAM developer Numem announced that it has been selected for a NASA AI project, for which the company will supply its Numem NuRAM MRAM-based Memory. Numem says its memory enables a 2-3x smaller memory area and 20x to 50x lower standby power compared to SRAM.

The project, titled “DNN Radiation Hardened Co-processor as companion chip to NASA’s upcoming High-Performance Spaceflight Computing Processor” will develop a reconfigurable DNN Engine with multiple compute units which can support a wide range of DNN models and frame rates.

Researchers from the National Taiwan University developed an ultra-high performance MTJ, using a superlattice barrier and half-metallic magnets. The so-called superlattice-MTJ can be the basis of a new class of STT-MRAM (which the researcher call SS-MRAM) that achieves ultra-low power RA and write operations, high writing speed and unlimited endurance.

SS-MRAM adopts a superlattice barrier that replaces the MgO layer used in common STT-MRAM. The MgO layer is unstable and also suffers from a very large RA which results in high power consumption for writing operations. The superlattice has higher spin polarization than MgO and so the SS-MARM can provides not only ultra-high MR ratio but also ultra-low RA for high-speed and low power writing.

pMTJ STT-MRAM developer Avalanche Technology announced that its new industrial-grade Serial (SPI) P-SRAM (Persistent SRAM) memory devices are now available. The Serial (SPI) memory devices are designed to be drop-in replacements to Cypress F-RAM and Everspin Toggle MRAM memory products.

The Series (SPI) series supports up to 50MHz clock rate in 1Mb and 4Mb density options, in two packages - 8-pin SOIC and 8-pin WSON. These use Avalanche's 40nm pMTJ STT-MRAM chips.

This is a sponsored post by Integral Solutions Int'l

MRAM is likely to be the most promising next-generation non-volatile memory technology today. Toggle MRAM and STT-MRAM are already entering the market, gaining market share in many applications. Next-generation MRAM technologies, such as SOT-MRAM could enable the replacement of even the fastest SRAM applications, with higher densities.

Source: Coughlin Associates, 2019

The MRAM production process has many stages, as device architecture is relatively complex, with a magnetic cell (frontplane) fabricated on top of a CMOS backplane. (use Figure 2 or Figure 3 from Coughlin). Measurement and characterization of devices are highly important, and the production of MRAM memories depend on measurement tools are are specialized for MRAM and STT-MRAM measurements.

Everspin Technologies announced its Q4 2019 financial results, with revenues of $9.8 million (up 5% from Q3 2019) and a net loss of $3.1 million, down from a net loss of $3.7 million in Q3 2019.

In 2019, Everspin reports revenues of $37.5 million and a net loss of $14.7 million, down from $17.8 million in 2018.

Everspin Technologies announced that it has amended its STT-MRAM joint development agreement (JDA) with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to set the terms for a future project on an advanced 12 nm FinFET MRAM solution. Everspin agreement included 40 nm, 28 nm and 22 nm processes, and now also include 12 nm.

GF recently announced it has achieved initial production of embedded MRAM (eMRAM) on its 22FDX platform.

Researchers from Northwestern University suggest building STT-MRAM devices from antiferromagnetic materials - as opposed to the currently-used ferromagnetic ones. The researchers say that these materials will enable higher-density devices that feature high speed writing with low currents.

Antiferromagnetic materials are magnetically ordered at the microscopic scale, but not at the macroscopic scale. This means that there is no magnetic force between adjacent bits in MRAM cells built from these materials - which means you can pack them very close together.