Product category:
Memory Devices and Modules
News Release from: Oki Electric
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 24 February 2003
Trinion cell provides key to NDRO-FeRAM
accord
Oki Electric and Symetrix Corp have signed a co-operation and licensing agreement for the joint commercialisation of advanced NDRO ferroelectric RAMs based on Symetrix' new Trinion cell technology.
Oki Electric and Symetrix Corp have signed a co-operation and licensing agreement for the joint commercialisation of advanced NDRO (nondestructive readout) FeRAMs (ferroelectric random access memories) based on Symetrix' new Trinion cell technology Under the agreement, Symetrix will license its NDRO-FeRAM technology to Oki, and the two companies will collaborate on the development of a 16Mbit FeRAM
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 10 Apr 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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It is also agreed that Oki will provide Symetrix with foundry services from its 0.25-micron fabrication facility.
"The partnership with Symetrix is an essential one, as NDRO-FeRAM is a product that responds to the customer needs for lower-power consumption advanced nonvolatile memories", stated Katsuhiko Sano, President of Silicon Solutions Company at Oki Electric.
"Through the provision of the foundry function by Oki, we believe that both companies can contribute to expansion of the market, as well".
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"This is an important development for FeRAMs and for Symetrix", said Dr Carlos Paz de Araujo, Chairman of Symetrix.
"We are excited to be working with a great company like Oki as Symetrix begins offering commercial FeRAM products.
Our new Trinion cell is a major breakthrough for high density FeRAMs in both speed and power, and Oki will provide us with first-class manufacturing capacity".
Oki has previously licensed FeRAM technology from Symetrix, and will begin shipping embedded FeRAM devices this year based on the licensed technology.
Devices that use this technology provide lower power consumption and faster write speeds than other nonvolatile memories such as Flash.
Building on this prior success, Symetrix and Oki have now agreed to increase the scope of the license to include the Symetrix high-speed and high-density next generation memory cell, the Trinion cell.
This represents a breakthrough in FeRAMs as it provides large memories like those of 16Mbit devices with extremely fast cycle times of less than 20ns, while operating at a mere 1.8V for both read and write operations.
The Trinion cell also provides NDRO technology that enables the cell to be read an infinite number of times, unlike destructive-read memories, which can only be read a limited number of times.
This characteristic expands FeRAM's applications, including its use for programming memory.
In addition, the cell makes optimal use of the already low-fatigue layered perovskite (Y-1) technology owned by Symetrix.
Oki's expertise in manufacturing and product reliability was a major determining factor in Symetrix entering into this collaboration.
The two companies have conducted research and development for the past three years, culminating in the licensing of Oki by Symetrix.
Now, under the new expanded licensing and co-operation agreement, Oki will also provide foundry services for Symetrix and other licensees of its FeRAM technology.
The companies expect to have engineering samples by the end of the year, and both companies will be marketing this product for use in mobile devices such as mobile phones, PDAs and game machines.
Embedded products will enter the market first, followed by stand-alone memories.
As a result, the alliance of Oki and Symetrix, the first sub-100ns high-density FeRAM devices will enter the world market.
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