Embedded RRAM - Page 4

Crossbar announced that Microsemi, the largest US military and aerospace semiconductor supplier, has signed a licensing agreement which will bring Crossbar's RRAM technology to Microsemi's products.

As part of the agreement, Microsemi and Crossbar will collaborate in the research, development and application of Crossbar’s proprietary ReRAM technology in next generation products from Microsemi.

Rambus, in collaboration with GigaDevice, launched a new company called Reliance Memory, to commercialize RRAM technology for embedded devices. Rambus also announced the strategic investment partners in Reliance Memory - THG Ventures, West Summit Capital, Walden International and Zhisland Capital.

Rambus is developing RRAM technologies since 2012, when it acquired Unity Semiconductor, an RRAM developer, for $35 million. In 2017 Rambus licensed its RRAM patents to Western Digital.

Israel-based Weebit Nano was established in 2014 with an aim to commercialize Rice University's SiOx RRAM technology. Weebit is progressing towards it stated goal of producing a 40nm RRAM Silicon Oxide working cell by the end of 2017.

Coby Hanoch was recently appointed as the company's new CEO, and was kind enough to answer a few questions we had. Coby was VP Worldwide sales at Verisity where he was part of the founding team and grew the company to over $100M sales per year. He was also VP Worldwide sales at Jasper. Mr Hanoch holds a Bachelor of Science in Systems Design from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Q: Coby, you recently joined Weebit as a CEO. What made you excited about Weebit's technology and business?

I believe Weebit’s technology has great potential, especially considering the fact that it is based on standard materials and tools, so once we finish the development we should be able to move more easily into production than other emerging memory technologies I have come across. In addition, and probably more important than the technology, a key driver to the success of a company is the team, and I was very impressed by Weebit’s team and the atmosphere in the company.

In March 2016 Crossbar announced its strategic partnership with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) to co-develop and produce RRAM technologies. In January 2017 Crossbar announced that it started sampling RRAM chips.

In an interesting interview with Electronic Design, Crossbar's Vice President of Strategic Marketing & Business Development, Sylvain Dubois, discloses that Crossbar has started to ramp up production, and has signed a dozen agreements to license its technology to MCU/SoC companies. Crossbar's current developments are targeting embedded ReRAM IPs integrated in MCUs/SoCs for IoT, consumer electronics, artificial intelligence, and industrial applications.

According to reports, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is aiming to start producing embedded RRAM chips in 2019 using a 22 nm process. This will be initial "risk production" to gauge market reception.

TSMC also aims to start embedded MRAM chip production in 2018.

Panasonic announced a new partnership with Taiwan-based United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) to co-develop and produce RRAM devices. The two companies aim to use a 40nm process to produce RRAM chips that consume one-seventh the power of today's NAND flash memory.

Panasonic will be in charge of designing the chips, and the two companies will co-develop the microfabrication technologies. Actual production will be done at UMC. The two companies plan to start shipping samples in 2018 and mass produce RRAM chips by 2019. The first RRAM devices will be embedded in microcontrollers.

In March 2016 Crossbar announced its strategic partnership with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) to co-develop and produce RRAM technologies. Crossbar now says it started to sample embedded RRAM chips from SMIC.

SMIC, China's largest semiconductor foundry, is using a 40nm process, and Crossbar says that it plans for a 28nm process - and even 10nm or lower down the road. The chip design uses non-conductive amorphous silicon (a-SI) technology. Crossbar's chips can either use a 1T1R architecture (1 transistor per RRAM, which offers the lowest latency and so useful for embedded memory and caching) or 1TnR (which uses up to 2,000 cells per transistor using a crossbar scheme - which makes for higher density chips useful for storage).

Crossbar announced a strategic partnership with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) - China's largest semiconductor foundry. The two companies agreed to co-develop and produce RRAM technologies.

Crossbar says that as the company enters the licensing phase, it is honored to collaborate with SMIC - which is a major stepping stone towards its RRAM technology commercialization.