Samsung begins mass production of mram

Samsung has started mass production of emram, or embedded magnetic random access memory. The memory is made on a 28nm process. Mram is a potential successor to both dram and flash.

Samsung states that with the onset of mass production, it has demonstrated that it has overcome the technical hurdles surrounding the 28FDS-based emram and is capable of further scaling this memory type. The 28nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator process is a mature chip manufacturing process in which a layer of oxide is applied over the wafer so that the transistors are isolated from the silicon base layer.

Mram stands for magnetoresistive memory and Samsung calls its implementation embedded mram, or emram. In this type, data is stored using the spin of electrons. Storage takes place magnetically and not electrically. It is therefore about fast, non-volatile memory without degradation. In this way, data is also preserved without electricity, while processing data is just as fast as with dram. By combining durability with the speed of dram or sram, mram is also seen as the successor to these memory types and flash memory.

According to Samsung, the produced emram achieves a write speed that is about a thousand times faster than flash memory. In addition, compared to eflash, emram can operate with a lower voltage, so that it is more economical in use, also because it does not consume any power when a device with this memory is switched off.

The South Korean manufacturer says its emram could bring benefits for a variety of applications, such as MCUs, IoT products and artificial intelligence. The manufacturer states that its emram modules are also easy to integrate into existing technology.

Samsung says it will complete the tape-out of an emram 1Gbit test chip this year. The term tape-out stands for the completion of the design phase before the product can go into production.