Emerging Memories: Ship First, Perfect Later

Gary Hilson, EETimes
9/20/2016 00:31 AM EDT

TORONTO—Perennially emerging memories may be getting stuck in that mode in part because vendors are awaiting an elusive goal: perfection. But Everspin CEO Phillip LoPresti believes instead that it's important to get technology into production to gain market adoption.

The MRAM maker's ongoing partnership with GlobalFoundries is part of that strategy, and Everspin just announced that its most advanced ST-MRAM technology will be available as an embedded memory through that relationship. GlobalFoundries recently announced its 22FDX eMRAM, providing customers with access to memory that offers the benefit of a working memory such as SRAM, combined with code storage in the form of flash.

Everspin is arguably one of the few, if only, MRAM makers shipping product, although last year Avalanche Technology announced it was sampling what it claimed were the industry's first Spin Transfer Torque Magnetic RAM (STT-MRAM) chips. Its STT-MRAM memory on proprietary perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (pMTJ) cells manufactured on a high volume, low cost, standard CMOS 300mm process. Spin Transfer Technologies recently outlined its 20nm MRAM milestones.

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