May 2005

Northern Lights Semiconductor Corporation has a suite of innovative parallel and serial standalone MRAM devices whose storage densities ranging from 4Kb to 1Mb. Northern Lights Semiconductor Corporation plans to introduce 16Mb, 64Mb and 128Mb MRAM ICs as well as 256Mb ICs by the end of 2005, utilizing 0.18 micron technology, 0.13 micron technology, and 90 nm technology. "Further, the company has significant metallization process capabilities and advance packaging solutions, both central to the fabrication of embedded and stand-alone MRAM ICs," says Research Analyst, Sivakumar Muthuramalingam.

Northern Lights Semiconductor Corporation's proven excellence in research and technology development for MRAM integrated circuits makes it a worthy recipient of Frost & Sullivan's 2005 Excellence in Research of the Year Award.

Dr. Cynthia Kuper, Chief Technology Officer, appeared on a plenary panel on Tuesday, May 24, to discuss "Nano Firsts," and how MRAM differs from competing memory technologies. Dr. Kuper explained why MRAM is particularly well suited to the growing RFID market, and highlighted the company's current business strategy and major technology milestones in the development of MRAM technology for the RFID market.

In addition to Dr. Kuper's presentation, Steven Van Fleet, Senior RFID Consultant for Micromem participated in a plenary panel discussion on nanotechnology systems integration on Tuesday, May 24. Mr. Van Fleet discussed technical challenges and industry standards affecting nano systems integration.

Singulus technologies today announced the sale of a TIMARIS thin-film deposition system for MRAM wafer production to GRANDIS in Silicon Valley/USA. The two companies also signed a collaborative agreement on advanced TMR film development for MRAM (magnetic random access memory).

Dr. Yiming Huai, CTO and VP Engineering of GRANDIS remarked that "the newly-developed SINGULUS TIMARIS system allows us to accelerate the development of our STT-RAM technology". STT-RAM is a type of MRAM that employs spin transfer torque writing technology to overcome the high write currents and scaling limitations of conventional MRAM. As a result, STT-RAM is extendable to the 65 nm node and below.

Roland Lacher, CEO of SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES, commented: "The collaboration with GRANDIS is important to our company and is aimed at developing new TMR thin-film processes on the TIMARIS platform. TMR technology will be a key element in the production of next-generation MRAM. GRANDIS is a world leader in this area and works with companies such as RENESAS in Japan".

KLA-Tencor today unveiled the MRW3TM its third-generation magnetic metrology system for the hard disk drive (HDD) and semiconductor memory markets. Based on the market-leading MRW200 platform, the MRW3 measures the magnetic properties of HDD recording heads and magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) on product wafers for production control and early detection of process issues that could adversely impact yield. Leveraging a proprietary closed-loop magnet system, the MRW3 delivers best-in-class magnetic field repeatability of less than 0.1 oersted without sacrificing its performance advantage of sub-one second per resistance/magnetic-field transfer curve. In addition, the MRW3 introduces features such as GEM/SECS factory automation, high reliability (1000 hours MTBF) and both 200-mm and 300-mm configurations making it the first "fab-ready" quasi-static test system on the market today.

The MRW3 system has completed an extensive beta evaluation at one of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturing companies.

Advanced HDD recording heads, as well as MRAM, a leading candidate for next-generation non-volatile solid state memory, use magnetic tunnel junctions for their core technology. The MRW3 system incorporates specific features to accelerate the development of this important new technology, including constant-voltage electronics and bit toggle tests. According to Janusz Nowak, a leading researcher in the field of magnetic tunnel junctions, "The KLA-Tencor MRW3 provides essential measurement capability that accelerates the development and production of devices using magnetic tunnel junctions."

KLA-Tencor is currently accepting orders for the MRW3. Shipping will begin this month.

The University of Oxford claims to have a more compact read cell for MRAM. “It is an offset read protocol and uses a single transistor per line,” said inventor Dr Chris Padbury.
According to Padbury, conventional MRAM read circuits use a form of virtual-earth read protocol. “This uses an op-amp which is slow, and takes up a lot of room,” said Padbury.
Offset bias read involves using a selected MRAM cell, which has one of two resistances depending on the state stored, in the base circuit of a bipolar transistor.