STT-MRAM - Page 9

Spin Transfer Technologies announced that it has raised $22.8 million via a convertible bridge facility. STT says that this will help the company get ready to complete its Series B funding round, targeting strategic investors and planned to conclude by end of Q1 2018.

In January 2017 STT announced that it has started to deliver fully functional ST-MRAM samples to customers in North America and Asia. The sample devices are based on the company's Orthogonal Spin Transfer Magneto-Resistive Random Access Memory technology (OST-MRAM), and use 80nm perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs)., the latest generation of MRAM technology.

Seagate demonstrate several new prototypes and technologies at Flash Memory Summit last week, and one of these is the new Nytron 5000B SSD drive that is a high-performance boot drive. The new device has 256GB of 3D MLC NAND and makes use of 1258MB of Everspin's STT-MRAM in addition to a "normal" DRAM cache.

Seagate says that the MRAM can be used as either a write cache for user data or it can be exposed directly as a separate storage namespace for explicit tiered storage. Seagate said that this is currently just a test-platform prototype - and not a preview of an upcoming product.

Everspin announced that it started sampling 1Gb STT-MRAM chips. Everspin's new chips provide a high-endurance, persistant memory with a DDR4-compatible interface. Everspin sees these chips being used in storage devices to provide protection against power loss without the use of supercapacitors or batteries.

Everspin's new pMTJ 1Gb chips provide 4 times the capacity of the company's current 256Mb DDR3 chips. The 1 Gb MRAM is produced in 28nm CMOS on 300mm wafers in partnership with GlobalFoundries.

GlobalFoundries has plans to deploy Everspin's perpendicular (pMTJ) STT-MRAM as an embedded 22nm memory - as part of GF's 22FDX platform. GlobalFoundries has released a technical paper that details the eMRAM ability to retain data at high temperatures.

The eMRAM can retain data through solder reflow at 260 degrees Celsius, and for more than 10 years at 125 degrees Celsius, plus read/write with outstanding endurance at 125 degrees Celsius. GlobalFoundries says that this will enable eMRAM to be used for general purpose MCUs and automotive SOCs.

During Samsung Electronic's Foundry Forum, the Korean chip maker reaffirmed its goal to start producing STT-MRAM chips in 2018. In fact Samsung now says that it will mass produce these chips next year, while last year it said that 2018 will only see limited production while real mass production will only begin in 2019.

Samsung announced it will produce the 2018 MRAM chips will be produced using 8-nano low power plus (8LMPP) semiconductor foundry process. Samsung sees MRAM produced by 4LPP by 2020.

Luc Thomas from Headway, a TDK-owned recording head designer and producer, explains the basic principles and challenges of STT-MRAM for embedded memory applications:

This lecture was given at the MSST 2017 Mass Storage Conference (May 15 — 19, 2017).

Everspin announced several new applications and customers for its MRAM solutions. First up is the new nvNITRO storage accelerator product family. These new cards (aimed for demanding applications such as financial transactions) are available in either 1Gb or 2Gb, and are based on Everspin's 256Mb DDR STT-MRAM chips. Later this year Everspin will release new models based on its 1Gb DDR4 chips which will enable capacities up to 16Gb.

Everspin says that the nvNITRO operate at a very fast 1,500,000 IOPS with 6-ms end-to-end latency. Everspin is testing the first cards at customers now, and initial production will begin in Q2 2017.

Spin Transfer Technologies announced that it started to deliver fully functional ST-MRAM samples to customers in North America and Asia.

The sample devices are based on the company's Orthogonal Spin Transfer Magneto-Resistive Random Access Memory technology (OST-MRAM), and use 80nm perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs)., the latest generation of MRAM technology.

Toshiba and SK Hynix co-developed a 4-Gbit STT-MRAM chip, and presented a prototype at IEDM 2016.

The prototype chip is made from eight 512-Mbit banks, and the cell area is equivalent to that of DRAM - at 9F2, which Hynix says is much smaller than conventional STT-MRAMs (50F2).

Samsung demonstrated an LCD display that uses a tCON chip that uses embedded 28nm pMTJ STT-MRAM memory, instead of the normally used SRAM. The MRAM device had a density of 8Mb and a 1T-1MTJ cell architecture. The cell size is 0.0364 um².

A tCON chip is a timing controller chip that processes the video signal input and processes it to generate control signal to the source & gate driver of the LCD display. The memory is used a a frame memory which stores previous frame data. Samsung prepared a test chip that contains both SRAM and MRAM memory devices to show that there is no difference between the two. SRAM replacement is a popular MRAM application.