Everspin Technologies is a public
semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...
company headquartered in
Chandler, Arizona
Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). It is bordered to the north and west by Tempe, to the north by Mesa, to the west by Phoenix, to the ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. It develops and manufactures discrete magnetoresistive RAM or
magnetoresistive random-access memory
Magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) is a type of non-volatile random-access memory which stores data in magnetic domains. Developed in the mid-1980s, proponents have argued that magnetoresistive RAM will eventually surpass competing tec ...
(MRAM) products, including Toggle MRAM and Spin-Transfer Torque MRAM (STT-MRAM) product families. It also licenses its technology for use in embedded MRAM (eMRAM) applications, magnetic sensor applications as well as performs backend foundry services for eMRAM.
MRAM has the performance characteristics close to
static random-access memory
Static random-access memory (static RAM or SRAM) is a type of random-access memory (RAM) that uses latching circuitry (flip-flop) to store each bit. SRAM is volatile memory; data is lost when power is removed.
The term ''static'' differen ...
(SRAM) while also having the persistence of non-volatile memory, meaning that it will not lose its charge or data if power is removed from the system. This characteristic makes MRAM suitable for a large number of applications where persistence, performance, endurance and reliability are critical.
History
The path to MRAM began in 1984 when the
GMR effect was discovered by
Albert Fert
Albert Fert (; born 7 March 1938) is a French physicist and one of the discoverers of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks. Currently, he is an emeritus professor at Paris-Saclay University in Orsay, ...
and
Peter Grünberg
Peter Andreas Grünberg (; 18 May 1939 – 7 April 2018) was a German physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his discovery with Albert Fert of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk drive ...
. Twelve years later, in 1996,
spin-transfer torque
Spin-transfer torque (STT) is an effect in which the orientation of a magnetic layer in a magnetic tunnel junction or spin valve can be modified using a spin-polarized current.
Charge carriers (such as electrons) have a property known as spin wh ...
is proposed, enabling a
magnetic tunnel junction
Tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) is a magnetoresistive effect that occurs in a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ), which is a component consisting of two ferromagnets separated by a thin insulator. If the insulating layer is thin enough (typically a fe ...
or
spin valve
A spin valve is a device, consisting of two or more conducting magnetic materials, whose electrical resistance can change between two values depending on the relative alignment of the magnetization in the layers. The resistance change is a result ...
to be modified with a spin-polarized current. At this point,
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...
began their
MRAM
Magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) is a type of non-volatile random-access memory which stores data in magnetic domains. Developed in the mid-1980s, proponents have argued that magnetoresistive RAM will eventually surpass competing tec ...
research, which led to their first MTJ in 1998. A year later, in 1999, Motorola developed a 256Kb
MRAM
Magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) is a type of non-volatile random-access memory which stores data in magnetic domains. Developed in the mid-1980s, proponents have argued that magnetoresistive RAM will eventually surpass competing tec ...
Test Chip that enabled work to begin on productizing MRAM technology, which was followed by a patent for Toggle being granted to Motorola in 2002. The industry's first MRAM (4Mb) product became commercially available in 2006.
Much of the early MRAM work was done by Motorola, who spun off their semiconductor business in 2004, creating
Freescale Semiconductor
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer. It was created by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola in 2004. Freescale focused their integrated circuit products on the automotive, embed ...
in 2008, which eventually spun out the MRAM business as Everspin Technologies.
In 2008, Everspin announced
BGA packages for their MRAM product family that would support densities from 256Kb to 4Mb. The following year, in 2009, Everspin released their first generation SPI MRAM product family and began shipping the first embedded MRAM samples in conjunction with
GlobalFoundries
GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF or GloFo) is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, th ...
. By 2010, Everspin had begun ramping production and sold its first million MRAMs. That same year qualification had completed on the industry's first embedded MRAM and 16Mb densities had been released.
With production ramping, Everspin shipped its four millionth stand-alone MRAM and its two millionth embedded MRAM by 2011. The 64Mb ST-MRAM, which was produced on a 90 nm process occurred in 2012.
In 2014 Everspin partnered with
GlobalFoundries
GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF or GloFo) is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, th ...
for production of in-plane and perpendicular MTJ
ST-MRAM on 300mm wafers, utilizing 40 nm and 28 nm node processes.
By 2016, Everspin had announced it was shipping samples of the industry's first 256Mb ST-MRAM to customers, GlobalFoundries announced 22 nm embedded MRAM in conjunction with Everspin, and Everspin went public in an IPO later in the year on October 7.
In 2017, Everspin expanded support for MRAM to FPGAs by bringing DDR3 and DDR4 compatibility to its ST-MRAM products, making it compatible with Xilinx's UltraScale FPGA memory controller. On September 1, 2017, Kevin Conley was named Everspin CEO and President. Conley was the former CTO of SanDisk and brings enterprise storage expertise to the company.
In 2018, Everspin ramped production volumes of its 256Mb STT-MRAM and in December shipped its first customer samples of the 1Gb STT-MRAM.
In 2019, Everspin began pre-production of its 1Gb STT-MRAM in June and announced the expansion of the design-in ecosystem to enable system designers to implement the 1Gb ST-DDR4 product in their designs.
Technology
MRAM
Magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) is a type of non-volatile random-access memory which stores data in magnetic domains. Developed in the mid-1980s, proponents have argued that magnetoresistive RAM will eventually surpass competing tec ...
uses the magnetism of
electron spin
In atomic physics, the electron magnetic moment, or more specifically the electron magnetic dipole moment, is the magnetic moment of an electron resulting from its intrinsic properties of spin (physics), spin and electric charge. The value of the ...
to provide fast and enduring
non-volatile memory
Non-volatile memory (NVM) or non-volatile storage is a type of computer memory that can retain stored information even after power is removed. In contrast, volatile memory needs constant power in order to retain data.
Non-volatile memory typic ...
. MRAM stores information in
magnetic
Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particle ...
material that is integrated with
silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic tab ...
circuitry to deliver the speed of
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* Ra ...
with the non-volatility of
Flash
Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Fictional aliases
* Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed:
** Flash (Barry Allen)
** Flash (Jay Garrick)
** Wally West, the first Kid ...
.
Headquartered in
Chandler, Arizona
Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). It is bordered to the north and west by Tempe, to the north by Mesa, to the west by Phoenix, to the ...
, Everspin owns and operates a manufacturing line for its magnetic back-end-of-line
wafer
A wafer is a crisp, often sweet, very thin, flat, light and dry biscuit, often used to decorate ice cream, and also used as a garnish on some sweet dishes. Wafers can also be made into cookies with cream flavoring sandwiched between them. They ...
processing, using standard
CMOS
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...
wafers from foundries. Everspin's current MRAM products are based on
180-nm,
130-nm,
40-nm, and
28-nm process technology nodes and industry standard packages.
Products
Toggle MRAM
Toggle MRAM memory utilizes the magnetism of electron spin, enabling the storage of data without volatility or wear-out. Toggle MRAM utilizes a single transistor and a single MTJ cell in order to provide a durable, high-density memory. Because of the non-volatility of Toggle MRAM, data that is held in this memory is accessible for 20 years, at temperature (from -40c to 150c). The MTJ is composed of a fixed magnetic layer, a thin dielectric tunnel barrier, and a free magnetic layer. When a bias is applied to the Spin Toggle's MTJ, electrons that are spin polarized by the magnetic layers "tunnel" across the dielectric barrier. The MTJ device has a low resistance when the magnetic moment of the free layer is parallel to the fixed layer and a high resistance when the free layer moment is oriented anti-parallel to the fixed layer moment.
Production densities include 128Kb to 16Mb; available in Parallel and SPI interfaces; DFN, SOIC, BGA, and TSOP2 packages
Spin-transfer torque MRAM
Spin-transfer torque is a type of MRAM memory (STT-MRAM) built with a perpendicular MTJ that uses the spin-transfer torque property (the manipulation of the spin of electrons with a polarizing current) to manipulate the magnetic state of the free layer to program, or write, the bits in the memory array. Everspin's Perpendicular MTJ stack designs with high perpendicular magnetic anisotropy bring long data retention, small cell size, high density, high endurance, and low power. STT-MRAM has lower
switching energy
Switching may refer to:
Computing and technology
* Switching, functions performed by a switch:
** Electronic switching
** Packet switching, a digital networking communications methodology
*** LAN switching, packet switching on Local Area Network ...
compared to Toggle MRAM, and can reach higher densities. STT-MRAM products from Everspin are compatible with JEDEC standard interfaces for DDR3 and DDR4 (with some modifications needed for MRAM technology). In this mode, the DDR3 product can act like a persistent (non-volatile) DRAM and require no refresh, while the DDR4 product has self-refresh mode under idle state conditions. The DDR4 compatible STT-MRAM devices, with a 1Gb density, began early sampling to customers in early August 2017. In June 2019, the 1Gb STT-MRAM entered pilot production.
nvNITRO Storage Accelerators
Everspin developed nvNITRO products to address storage requirements that are typically being served by
NVMe
NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via PCI Express (PCIe) bus. The ...
products. There are two different form factors, HHHL (PCIe Gen3 x8), and U.2. These devices can store up to 1GB in data today, with greater capacities planned as MRAM densities scale up over time. nvNITRO products can handle both NVMe 1.1 and block storage requirements. Because these products are built on MRAM, they do not require the battery backup of typical magnetic storage products in order to protect data in flight. Everspin officially launched the first version of the nvNITRO in August 2017, based on 256Mb ST-MRAM (1GB and 2GB capacities). Future versions will be based on the upcoming 1Gb ST-MRAM densities which recently began sampling to customers. SMART Modular Technologies has signed up as an nvNITRO technology partner and will sell nvNITRO storage accelerators under their brand name.
Embedded MRAM
Everspin has partnered with GlobalFoundries to integrate MRAM into standard CMOS technology, enabling it to be integrated, non-destructively, into CMOS logic designs. The embedded MRAM can replace embedded flash, DRAM or SRAM in any CMOS design, delivering similar capacities of memory with non-volatility. Embedded MRAM can be integrated into 65 nm, 40 nm, 28 nm and now in GlobalFoundries 22FDX process which is 22 nm and utilizes fully depleted
silicon-on-insulator
In semiconductor manufacturing, silicon on insulator (SOI) technology is fabrication of silicon semiconductor devices in a layered silicon–insulator–silicon substrate, to reduce parasitic capacitance within the device, thereby improving perfo ...
(FD-SOI).
References
{{Reflist, 30em
External links
Everspin official website
Semiconductor companies of the United States
American companies established in 2008
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
2016 initial public offerings
Companies based in Chandler, Arizona