Freescale says it’s now offering the first commercial magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) device in volume production.
Austin , TX —The first commercial magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) device is now in volume production and available from Freescale Semiconductor . The company says its 4 megabit (Mbit) MRAM product has fast, non-volatile memory with unlimited endurance, a combination of characteristics unavailable in other individual semiconductor memory products. The device is built on a “foundation of technology protected by more than 100 Freescale patents, including toggle-bit switching.” MRAM uses magnetic materials combined with conventional silicon circuitry to deliver the speed of SRAM with the non-volatility of flash in a single, high-endurance device. Successful commercialization of this technology could hasten new classes of electronic products offering dramatic advances in size, cost, power consumption, and system performance, the company suggests.
MR2A16A is appropriate for a variety of commercial applications, such as networking, security, data storage, gaming, and printers, company says. It’s engineered to replace battery-backed SRAM units and also could be used in cache buffers, configuration storage memories, and other applications that require the speed, endurance, and non-volatility of MRAM. The 3.3 V device has a commercial temperature range, 35 nanosecond read and write cycle times, and asynchronous memory organized as 256K words by 16 bits. Industry standard SRAM pinout arrangement allows for system design flexibility without bus contention. The device is housed in a 400 mil TSOP type-II RoHS package. It is manufactured at Freescale’s 200 mm Chandler Fab in Arizona.
MR2A16A MRAM is available now.
—Edited by Mark T. Hoske , Control Engineering editor in chief
