Everspin Takes MRAM Up a Notch
Everspin Technologies said it has moved its MRAM production to a 130 nm process for its newest 4 Mb products. The Freescale spin-off is pursuing a "somewhat different" strategy than Freescale's original plans for MRAM technology, said Everspin COO Saied Tehrani.
David Lammers, News Editor -- Semiconductor International, 11/13/2008
Everspin Technologies Inc. (Chandler, Ariz.), the MRAM company that spun out of Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (Austin, Texas) in June, said it has moved to a 130 nm process for its newest products, 4 Mb MRAMs with by-8 and by-16 configurations that emulate SRAM timing.
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| Saied Tehrani, COO, Everspin Technologies |
Everspin is a standalone company, with a “somewhat modified strategy” from
for magneto-resistive memories, said COO Saied Tehrani. Rather than follow Freescale’s strategy to come out with just a few discrete MRAMs before moving to a predominantly embedded strategy — using MRAM as flash replacement on microcontrollers — Everspin plans to expand its discrete memory lineup while also cooperating with Freescale and others on embedded MRAM. “We will come out with a broad portfolio of standalone memories, in the megabit density range, not the gigabit densities,” Tehrani said. “There are a lot of opportunities there.”
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| MRAMs use magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) placed between the metal interconnects. |
Everspin leases space from Freescale’s Chandler fab, and Freescale remains an investor along with several venture capital firms. Everspin, which has a design team based in Austin, and Freescale are co-designing a consumer-use microcontroller with an embedded MRAM module.
At one point, Freescale planned to skip the 130 nm generation. Now, Tehrani said, Everspin is thinking about skipping the 90 nm node and going directly to a 65 nm process in a few years, enabling a density jump to 256 Mb. The company is targeting replacement of battery-backed SRAM in avionics, storage, networking, industrial automation, and other systems. The non-volatile products have a 35 nsec cycle time, and cost $14.25 in 10,000 unit quantities. He said MRAM has virtually unlimited endurance, while flash vendors suffer from limited write cycles and data lifetimes.
At least six semiconductor companies continue MRAM R&D programs, including an alliance between IBM Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.) and TDK Ltd. (Tokyo) for joint development of spin transfer torque (STT) technology. Grandis Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.) recently received a $6M DARPA grant to support an ongoing STT development program. Tehrani said STT is a technique that Everspin also is investigating, while emphasizing that Everspin is the only company in MRAM production.
“Instead of using metal lines to control the write cycle, spin torque uses a smaller direct current, and it changes the way we write the bit,” Tehrani said. “We have one of the most active spin transfer R&D programs, but we feel it comes into play at much smaller linewidths. Companies like Grandis have very good technology, but they don’t have their own production capabilities like Everspin does.”
Bob Merritt, a partner at memory market research firm Convergent Semiconductors, said, “We measure progress of the industry’s emerging memory technology programs based on who is ready to take orders and deliver products. Everspin’s MRAM continues to lead the industry.”
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Where the world is on memory requirements and progress, a 4MB MRAM device at 130nm technology...
Shrikant Lohokare - 2008-16-11 00:13:00
