Everspin Technologies

Everspin Technologies, Inc. is a publicly traded semiconductor company headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, United States. It develops and manufactures discrete magnetoresistive RAM or magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) products, including Toggle MRAM and Spin-Transfer Torque MRAM (STT-MRAM) product families.[2] It also licenses its technology for use in embedded MRAM (eMRAM) applications, magnetic sensor applications[3] as well as performing backend foundry services for eMRAM.

MRAM has the performance characteristics close to static random-access memory (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 and Peter Grünberg.[4] Twelve years later, in 1996,

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 [28] and SPI interfaces;[29] 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 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,[30] while the DDR4 product has self-refresh mode under idle state conditions.[31] The DDR4 compatible STT-MRAM devices, with a 1Gb density, began early sampling to customers in early August 2017.[32] In June 2019, the 1Gb STT-MRAM entered pilot production.[33] In 2020 GlobalFoundries started using its 12nm production platform for Everspin's MRAM.[34] The companies worked together since 2014, when GlobalFoundries produced 48nm MRAM products.[35]

nvNITRO Storage Accelerators

Everspin developed nvNITRO products to address storage requirements that are typically being served by NVMe 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.[36] SMART Modular Technologies has signed up as an nvNITRO technology partner and will sell nvNITRO storage accelerators under its brand name.[37][38]

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 (FD-SOI).[39]

type	Public
traded as	nasdaq: MRAM Russell Microcap component
industry	Semiconductors
foundation	2008
location	Chandler, Arizona, U.S.
area served	Worldwide
key people	Darin Billerbeck (chairman) Sanjeev Aggarwal (CEO & president)
products	MRAM memory non-volatile memory products
num employees	75 (2021)
revenue	US$55 million (2021)
homepage	everspin.com
footnotes	‡R1R‡