A long time ago we took a look at MRAM technology, and Crocus was one of the companies in play. Well, it’s been quiet since then. Lots of exotic memory ideas come in with a bang and quietly exit stage left at some point. Was MRAM going to be one of them?
Well, apparently not. At least not until Crocus finds a way to burn through a new $300M round of funding. For those of you struggling to get a measly $5M eleemosynary handout for a software venture, you’ve got to be shaking your head.
Of course, you know that that kind of money must involve capital, most likely a factory. And, in fact, the idea is to set up a back-end fab in Russia to add layers to standard CMOS wafers: those added layers will implement the magnetics (much the way a CMOS-last MEMS process builds on a pre-processed CMOS wafer). According to Crocus’s Barry Hoberman, there are three extra layers needed for the magnetics, plus one more metal/via layer.
The 90-/65-nm line should let them get up to 1G memories, perhaps beyond.
More funding details in their release…
