Everspin has announced a new MRAM chip (MR4A16B) with 16-megabit (Mb) density. Samples are available now, and mass-production will begin in July 2010. There are two options for the chips: commercial chips and industrial chips (that have a larger temperature range: -40°C to +85°C). Everspin also promises to continue and deliver MRAM at increasingly higher densities.
This is the first time since the MRAM chips were introduced by Freescale in 2006 that they announce higher-density chips.
The MR4A16B is a 3.3-volt, parallel I/O chip that features fast 35 ns access times with unlimited read/write cycles. Data is always non-volatile after each write for more than 20 years. In addition, MRAM is immune to soft error rates associated with cosmic rays that impact other memories. The 16Mb MRAM is organized as 1,048,576 words of 16 bits. Pin and function-compatible with asynchronous SRAM, the MR4A16B targets industrial automation, robotics, network and data storage, multi-function printers and a host of other systems traditionally limited to SRAM-based designs.