Q&A with Antoine Filipe, CEO, Spintron [Nov 04]

MRAM-Info.com recently had the opportunity to interview Antoine Filipe, CEO, Spintron. Spintron is a design house which has been developing an innovative MRAM technology, called e-MRAM for the last 2 years. The company is a spin-off from the French National Research Center, backed by French incubator Impulse and Venture Capitalist Primaveris. As a fabless company, Spintron avoids the large capital expenditure required to develop and fabricate its MRAM products.

Q: Thanks for taking the time for this Q&A with us. Can you tell us the difference between e-MRAM and MRAM? what are the advantages and disadvantages of e-MRAM? 
A: e-MRAM is an MRAM which is embedded within CMOS. With a single additional mask at contact level, it becomes possible to embed a fast non-volatile memory with CMOS.

The advantages are: initial investment reduced by 90%, strong reduction of process complexity and cost.
The disadvantage is: reluctance of production managers to introduce non-conventional materials (FeCoNi) within CMOS process back-end of the line.

Q: Who are your business partners? 
A: Our main partner is STMicroelectronics, a top-ten semiconductor manufacturer and a recognized leader in non-volatile memories.
On the R&D part, the technology is developed on LETI 8” CMOS line. LETI belongs to the international leaders in micro and nanotechnology research, acting as an accelerator of innovation. The most famous LETI start-up is SOITEC, the world’s leading manufacturer and supplier of SOI wafers. 

Q: Have you licensed your MRAM IP from any company? 
A: No, it is a specific technology licensed from French Research laboratories. 

Q: Have you got any customers that decided to use e-MRAM in their solutions? 
A: Basically, our products will be first produced at small memory size with a SRAM-like interface. Our prospective customers are interested by specific features: hardness to radiation, non-volatility functionality achieved without high voltages requested for flash (12V), for application such as storage of calibration data. 

Q: when do you expect products to be based on your technology to reach the market? 
A: Prototypes are expected end 2005.

Products are expected to reach the market within timeframe 2007-2009. 

Q: What are your expectations from MRAM in the following years? 
A: For niche markets, MRAM development will be limited by the ROI, i.e. how many businesses do I get with an initial investment of around 100 M€ requested for MRAM mass production. We think that our e-MRAM technology adequately address this issue and will be perfectly suited for these niche markets. For huge market such as FLASH replacement, the key issue is scaling below 65nm for several technological nodes. As long as MRAM has not demonstrated this scaling capability, the technology will remain a research device. From our point of view, MRAM still need some breakthrough development in order to achieve this scaling-down demonstration. 

Q: Can you give some examples of the "niche" markets you see as first adopting MRAM? 
A: Space & Defence : replacement of EEPROM and SRAM memories to avoid failure due to radiation Other are still confidential ... 

Q: What is your opinion about other next-generation memory technologies such as FRAM or OUM?
A: PCRAM seems to be very interesting regarding scaling-down. Nevertheless, this technology is facing some reliability concerns. From the popularity contest, PCRAM is loosing against FRAM and MRAM and may lack of industry mass support.

FRAM is now a “previous”-generation memory technology since first products were sold ten years ago. FRAM is now gaining wider acceptance around the electronic industry, from big player to small companies. Nevertheless, the market is still limited (below 50M€ annual sales) with only two main actors, RAMTRON and FUJITSU.

We think that the competition for the next-generation memory is still open, just wait and see…. 

Q: I'm an investor who is interested in MRAM, and foresee a great future for this new kind of memory. Can you give me some advice on investment opportunities?

A: Not easy to answer... The only small player is NVE with already a very high market value. You could bet on equipment suppliers, such as Magnetic solution or Singulus, but they are still private owned companies. Or on new start-ups such as Spintron or Crocus Technology :-)