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EE|Times EUROPE — The Memory Market 25

OPINION | MEMORY
contributions and filed countless key patents.
Can MRAM Get EU Back A large number of highly skilled professionals
have been trained in top-class research labs,
often through EU subsidies. Yet most of the
in the Memory Game? economic cash-in and the corresponding jobs
created have been harvested elsewhere.
Can MRAM’s latest developments be the
opportunity for Europe to get back in the
By Jean-Pierre Nozières game? Imec, EU’s hub for microelectron-
ics technologies, already boasts one of the
premier MRAM pilot lines, serving multiple
Memory is ubiquitous in electronic systems and serves multiple leaders in the field; at Arm, the worldwide
needs, from data storage to caching, buffering, and even, as most leader in memory IP and compilers, a team
recently explored, (in-memory) computing. For as long as most of us in the south of France is working hard to
can remember, the landscape has been unchanged, with a clear hier- deliver MRAM’s first memory compiler;
archy from “hot,” fast, and volatile on-chip SRAM cache to “cold,” GlobalFoundries is ramping up STT at
slow, and power-hungry nonvolatile storage flash, through multiple its state-of-the-art manufacturing plant
layers of off-chip DRAM buffers and working memory modules. To in Dresden, Germany. And a number of
use a sports analogy, memory is the industry’s Champions League: startups, spun off from a network of top-
same teams, same hierarchy, year in, year out. class spintronics research labs across the
After decades of unfulfilled promises, however, challengers in the form of emerging memory continent, are spread across the value chain.
technologies appear ready to break into the elite ranks. Embedded magnetic RAM (MRAM) Hprobe, for example, aims to become the
blocks in microcontrollers and standalone XPoint memory modules in data storage chips cur- leader in MRAM test equipment. Spin-Ion
rently sit at the forefront, but only the future will tell which technologies and applications will Technologies is entering the game from the
emerge victorious and which will be mere might-have-beens. processing side. And French startup Antaios,
One thing, however, that is not likely to change anytime soon is the players’ passports. the pioneer in SOT-MRAM technology, has
Companies from the U.S. and from Asia, recently with a strong push from China, continue to established key partnerships to demonstrate
dominate the market, leaving only crumbs for the rest of the world. Europe, which was always a the value proposition of SOT and move it
marginal player in the memory business, is now close to extinction, despite still boosting a num- from the Spintec lab, where it all began,
ber of Tier One players in the chip business — not to mention its share in the end-user market. to a partner fab.
Given the boatloads of cash required to enter the game (again, same as soccer’s elite), don’t Nobody is foolish enough to believe that
expect a sudden reversal in Europe’s fortunes. There is, however, a glimmer of hope, and a multibillion-dollar SOT-MRAM gigafab
it’s coming from scientists — yes, the same guys that constantly claim to have found the is on the horizon somewhere in Europe. In
“next big thing that will change the world” — and the nascent companies that grow up around a largely globalized ecosystem, Europe’s
their innovations. ability to develop a new technology on its
The EU has to ensure now, MRAM advocates have been trumpeting the own, exclusively in its own backyard, is a pipe
Let’s talk about MRAM. For more than two decades
dream. Strategic partnerships with American
that its core players can promise of a better (memory) world, with a technology and Asian industry giants are and will remain
remain at the forefront that could be deployed across the memory hierar- unavoidable. However, there is an opportunity
for Antaios and its fellow startups to become
chy. After a lot of twists and PR exercises from the
and move up the ladder, players at stake, it appears that the industry is finally key technology suppliers and pick up their fair
a task that will require gearing toward product implementation. In its latest value share of the pie.
flavor, called spin-transfer torque MRAM — STT for
One way or another, MRAM will bite into
more than goodwill. short — MRAM has been crowned by the industry as the semiconductor market and never look
back. One way or another, the EU has to
the embedded memory solution of choice, replacing
embedded flash at advanced technology nodes. With ensure that its core players can remain at the
an easier market accessibility for advanced-feature–sized embedded applications compared with forefront and move up the ladder, from hope-
the bleeding-edge technology required for standalone memories, all major foundries have joined fuls to minicorns to — who knows — future
the STT bandwagon. Though the volume production ramp-up has been slow to materialize, the unicorns. Making this happen will require
question is no longer if, but when, MRAM will finally make it out of the niche market. more than goodwill; here, as everywhere else,
The journey for STT has been long and tortuous and has required multiple scientific break- money comes into play, be it venture capital,
throughs, not only from the usual (process integration) suspects but also deep down to the very corporate funds, or government support. To
basic materials and electronic transport science that can only be found in academic research be a game-changer, this money has to trickle
labs. Of course, not all routes pursued in research may lead to the Promised Land, but some, down to the bottom of the food chain, to
such as the recently discovered spin-orbit torque (SOT) phenomenon, seem to offer a better startups and research labs. Back to the soccer
value proposition. analogy, not only to the wealthy, established
With STT embroiled in a three-way tug of war, unable to achieve speed, endurance, and data teams but also to the young and hopeful
retention simultaneously, SOT promises to serve both data storage and cache applications, emerging teams who play it differently. Bigger
replacing both embedded flash and embedded SRAM in virtually all semiconductor chips, from is not always better …
microcontrollers to microprocessors and systems-on-chip. It will be some time before SOT- Chiche? (“Dare you?”) ■
MRAM reaches the finish line, but the prospects definitely make the journey worth the effort.
MRAM was not invented in Europe per se but is part of an ecosystem, spintronics, which is Jean-Pierre Nozières is chairman and CEO
historically strong on this side of the pond, going back to the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to of Antaios and co-founder of the Spintec
Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg in 2007. Over the years, European scientists have made major research laboratory.

www.eetimes.eu | DECEMBER 2020