MRAM Addresses New Applications

Everspin Technologies is introducing the world’s first serial interface magneto-resistive random access memory (MRAM) family of products. These high–performance, non-volatile memory products are designed to enhance systems using the increasingly popular Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus now common on many microprocessors, microcontrollers and other integrated circuits.

“The high performance and reliability of Everspin’s MRAM technology are now available in a cost-effective family of serial MRAM products,” said Dr. Saied Tehrani, Everspin’s chief operating officer. “These products expand Everspin’s current portfolio of parallel interface by-8 and by-16 products broadly used in storage, industrial automation, office equipment, gaming, computer and communications systems.”

Everspin’s existing products offer 35ns read/write speeds and pin and timing compatibility with SRAMs. The new MR25H non-volatile serial MRAM family includes upward-compatible 256Kb, 512Kb and 1Mb products.  These Everspin MRAM devices do not require a write delay, run at clock speeds as fast as 40 MHz, and have unlimited endurance with more than 20 years data retention.  The MR25H256 (256Kb), MR25H512 (512Kb) and MR25H10 (1Mb) serial MRAM products operate from 2.7 to 3.6 volts while offering low standby and operating currents as well as a 3 µA (typical) sleep mode to further improve the system power consumption. The devices are byte-organized internally, containing 32KB, 64KB and 128KB of data respectively.

The announcement of a new interface option pushes MRAM into a wider range of applications. Everspin’s new SPI MRAM product has already found early customer support in high-performance, real-time data logging applications. Although Everspin’s current announcement does not yet extend the density of MRAM into the densities of other suppliers of SPI interface memory products, the company expects that the currently supported 1M, as well as the 4Mbit density anticipated soon, will address most of the high-volume SPI memory applications.
 
The reliability, performance and density of this product also makes it a great contender for the established and fast-growing smart power metering applications, which could represent a very significant volume for Everspin.

Based on recent announcements from other memory suppliers of SPI interfaces, two of the most notable applications are expected to be automotive and set top boxes. However, support of automotive applications has been one of the traditional strengths of Motorola and was one of the first targeted applications of this MRAM development program prior to the series of spinouts that established Everspin. The addition of the SPI interface broadens the application base for MRAM applications and aligns Everspin with that original high-volume application.