February 2005

The patent application was filed January 31, 2005 and will help to secure the company in its go forward strategy. This strategy relies on innovations made by the company through the work of Professor Harry Ruda, the University of Toronto and its collaborators. This patent filing encompasses compositions of matter as well as methods of making an MRAM device.

"This most recent filing will serve as a keystone in our patent portfolio as the company places great importance on its patent portfolio strategy. MRAM is undoubtedly a competitive industry and therefore we will continue to pay great attention to securing our business in that space," said the company's CTO, Dr. Cynthia Kuper.

NVE Chief Financial Officer Richard George said Monday that Cypress' sale of its MRAM unit is expected to be a positive because it only has a manufacturing agreement with Cypress, not a royalty deal.

"Our agreement with Cypress is not assignable, so we would anticipate negotiating a royalty agreement [with a buyer] ," George said.

Despite sampling MRAM, and 4 validating customers (out of 7 who got shipped MRAM samples), Cypress wants to sell its MRAM subsidiary.

"The second phase of our MRAM plan was to create a family of high-density MRAMs, ranging from four to 64 megabits in density. This segment of the MRAM market is much larger than the battery-backup SRAM market, partly because it offers the potential to take market share from the multibillion-dollar standard SRAM market, if the MRAM bit cost can be reduced to parity with the SRAM bit cost. Our battery-backup MRAM cell utilizes three transistors and two magnetic tunnel junctions (3T-2MTJ) per bit. In higher-density MRAMs, economic viability can be achieved only by switching to the simpler and denser 1T-1MTJ cell. The 1T-1MTJ cell is more difficult to design and manufacture than the 3T-2MTJ cell, which was invented at Cypress to solve the design and manufacturing problems that have prevented the commercialization of MRAM, despite over a decade of work by some of the world's most prominent semiconductor companies.

Micromem is pleased to announce that it has raised approximately US $1,500,000 from a private placement of securities at a price agreed upon by Micromem in December 2004.
The proceeds of the financing will be used to fund the further development of Micromem's MRAM technology and Micromem's filing of further patent applications as well as to meet its ongoing operational and working capital requirements.