In the May 24th Samsung Foundry Forum, Samsung released the company's research and development of MRAM memory, and also announced that the European company NXP as its first customer, the two sides signed a wafer foundry agreement, the production of 28 nm (FD-SOI) on the fully depleted insulating layer. During the forum, Korean chip makers reaffirmed their goal to begin production of STT MRAM chips in 2018. In fact, Samsung now says it will produce these chips on a large scale next year, and last year it said that 2018 will only see limited production, and real mass production will only begin in 2019. In addition, Samsung announced that it will produce MRAM chips in 2018 will use 8-nanometer semiconductor casting process production, by 2020 will use 4 nanometers to produce MRAM.
TSMC is not to be outdone, followed by the 25th TSMC technical forum for the first time to expose TSMC research and development for many years eMRAM (embedded magnetoresistive random access memory) and eRRAM (embedded resistive memory), respectively, the year after the risk test Production, mainly using 22-nanometer process, which will be TSMC in response to things networking, mobile devices, high-speed computing computers and smart cars and other four areas to provide faster performance and lower power consumption of new memory.
In fact, not only South Korea and Taiwan two OEM giants in the memory market is particularly fierce battle, and another Chinese memory rookie did not idle. But also the use of its capital and technical advantages in this emerging storage market for a world.
MRAM full name is magnetic random access memory. IBM has been in the field of MRAM (magnetic random access memory) has been in the field of twenty years. Initially IBM with Motorola want to build a field exchange MRAM, IBM now together Samsung is committed to the new MRAM technology - ST MRAM. Each of the bit units contains a transistor plus a vertically arranged tunnel intersection. The intersection of the tunnel contains two magnets, one of which is always pointing to the north pole, the other is a free magnet, the north pole can be switched up and down to represent the storage of 0 or 1. It only needs 7.5 microamps current through the polarization direction can be programmed. With low current pulse bending electrons, can quickly switch the magnetic bit, in order to achieve the correct spin; the same time, special anti-ferromagnetic material to reduce manufacturing costs. The technology is a thousand times faster than NAND. Not only that, MRAM more power, the use of (active) power consumption less than the traditional memory, deactivated (inactive) time, it is without electricity. You will find more information about electronic components here.
ReRAM is a nonvolatile memory based on resistive random access, which combines DRAM read and write speeds with SSD nonvolatile, with lower power consumption and faster read and write speeds The Although the name of the ReRAM with RAM, but in fact is like NAND flash memory used as data storage ROM, but its performance is stronger.
Its density is 40 times higher than DRAM memory, read speed 100 times, write speed 1000 times faster. ReRAM single chip (200mm or so) can be achieved terabyte storage, but also has a simple structure, easy to manufacture and so on. ReRAM memory chip energy consumption can reach 1/20 of the flash, the data erase the upper limit of the latter 10 times.
As a memory frontier technology, ReRAM future is expected to replace the current FlashRAM, and has a lower cost, more prominent performance advantages.
ReRAM based on memristor principle, the DRAM read and write speed and SSD non-volatile combination in one. The memory can still remember the data after turning off the power. If ReRAM has enough space, a PC with ReRAM will not need to load time.
SMIC has officially prepared a 40nm process using ReRAM chip, and said more advanced 28nm process version will soon come.
Reference: ne555n and pmdxb950upe