LONDON — Freescale Semiconductor Inc., the semiconductor company formed from Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, has cast its 4-Mbit MRAM as a standard product. The company is also sampling the part to customers, according to Freescale.
The move to launch the 4-Mbit MRAM as a standard product was expected, and the availability of the MRAM to customers ushers in a new era in memory technology. It also emphasizes Motorola's, and now Freescale's, leadership position in the memory technology.
The part numbered MR2A16A comes in 25- and 35-nsec access times. Details were posted at Freescale's Web site.
On Thursday (Sept. 23) afternoon, Freescale updated its Web site to reflect the status of its MRAM product line. Before the update, the Web site appeared to indicate that the parts were in production "ramp-up."
A spokesman for Freescale clarified the matter, saying that the company's MRAM products have been sampling since the beginning of this year. The company is currently offering what it calls "sampled parts" to customers, the spokesman said.
Freescale expects to be in production with standard MRAM products in 2005, the spokesman added.
The former Motorola SPS started sampling 4-Mbit nonvolatile memories made using 0.18-micron manufacturing process to a limited number of customers in October 2003.
At the time, Saied Tehrani, then MRAM technology director, said he expected the 4-Mbit MRAM to sample widely at the beginning of 2004, and to be introduced as a standard product by the end of 2004. At the same time, he said, embedded MRAM for use within SoC designs, again on 0.18-micron process technology, was expected to go on offer from the middle of 2004, with MRAM-enabled products expected to roll in 2005.
MRAM is one of several memory innovations aiming to replace DRAM and nonvolatile flash memory. It is claimed to offer something close to the speed of SRAM, with a density approaching that of single-transistor DRAM and the ability to store information when power is removed, like flash memory or EEPROM. Memories based on MRAM, ferroelectric and phase-change materials have been seen to be in a race to develop a 'universal memory' that could replace SRAM, DRAM and flash in many applications.
Freescale's competition includes Infineon and IBM, which is working with French company Altis Semiconductor SA. Infineon showed a prototype 16-Mbit MRAM back in June. At the time, Infineon acknowledged it was far from volume production.
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