News & Analysis
Comment
Gil Russell
I think the interesting part of the Adesto's technology is their ability to ...
chanj
If the claim is right, the technology will further reduce power consumption of ...
Update: Adesto ramps CBRAM, with Altis
Peter Clarke
6/28/2011 6:14 AM EDT
LONDON – Adesto Technologies Corp., a startup company developing conductive bridging RAM nonvolatile memory technology, has announced that it will ship products this year manufactured by foundry partner Altis Semiconductor SA. In September 2010 the company said it planned to sample a 1-Mbit serial EEPROM replacement as soon as the first quarter of 2011.
Adesto (Sunnyvale, Calif.) said it has formed a development and manufacturing partnership with Altis (Corbeil Essonnes, France) that will ship "CBRAM-based devices" in 2011. The two companies have been working together in research for two-and-a-half years, Adesto said.
Ed McKernan, director of business development for Adesto, said: "Yes we will be shipping our first product a 1-Mbit serial EEPROM drop-in replacement in 130-nm CMOS in 2H 2011. With regards to samples; as we had planned, we received internal samples in Q1 and we are sampling customers in Q3." Altis currently manufactures a 130-nm CMOS process at its 200-mm wafer fab with plans to go 90-nm.
Adesto is developing both stand-alone CBRAMs and embedded memory cores for licensing, the company said. CBRAM has been shown to scale both physically with Moore's Law to below 20nm as well as operationally with sub one volt operation, Adesto said. CBRAM cells can be programmed in less than 100-ns and CBRAM consumes 100 times lower current than current flash memory technologies in the market, the company said.
Adesto's technology is based on programmable metallization cell (PMC) technology licensed from Axon Technologies Corp., a spin-off of Arizona State University. Adesto is pitching its nonvolatile memory at applications in mobile devices and in servers, where power consumption and performance are both critical.
"Altis has been a valuable partner that has demonstrated a high level of know-how and innovation in the development of our technology. Both companies have worked relentlessly to reach fully yielding devices in relatively record time which is a significant milestone in any new memory technology development effort," said Narbeh Derhacobian, CEO of Adesto, in a statement.
"CBRAM is the low cost, low power and scalable emerging memory technology that opens up many opportunities for both Altis and Adesto," said Jean-Paul Beisson, CEO of Altis, in the same statement.
Related links and articles:
www.adestotech.com
www.altissemiconductor.com
News articles:
Startup readies conductive-bridging RAM
Adesto buys CBRAM IP from Qimonda
Adesto gains Darpa award
EE Times updates ‘Silicon 60’ list of emerging startups
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
resistion
6/28/2011 8:18 AM EDT
What makes CBRAM interesting is how ionic conduction is explicitly involved.
Sign in to Reply
peter.clarke
6/28/2011 8:32 AM EDT
Which makes the copper metallization in the Altis process important
Sign in to Reply
chanj
6/28/2011 1:11 PM EDT
If the claim is right, the technology will further reduce power consumption of mobile devices. Yet, 1Mbit sounds too little to most smartphones and tablets. What's the scalability?
Sign in to Reply
Gil Russell
6/29/2011 12:57 PM EDT
I think the interesting part of the Adesto's technology is their ability to overlay active CMOS substrate circuitry that can be applied as a BEOL process. The implication being that several different memory sizes and/or organizations can be entertained on a single device series. Big market impact? I think so...,
Sign in to Reply