Freescale said the spin off, named EverSpin Technologies and backed by a group of venture capital investors, would focus on the development, production and sale of magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) products.

By spinning off the unit rather than continue the development and marketing of the MRAM technology in-house, Freescale hopes to accelerate its adoption by expanding the product base into new semiconductor products and widening the pool of potential customers worldwide.

"MRAM technology is a differentiating technology with numerous applications across the semiconductor market in standalone memory and embedded products," said Lisa Su, senior VP and chief technology officer for Freescale in a statement. "The decision to form a new company is intended to accelerate the adoption of MRAM across the entire suite of new applications."

MRAM is seen by many analysts as an alternative to traditional memory ICs because it promises high speed and low-power options with the density of DRAM and minus the volatility of flash memory products.

In addition to Freescale, other companies either pursuing the development or already marketing MRAM include NEC, Renesas and Toshiba.

Su explained in an interview with EETimes that Freescale decided to spin off its MRAM division and partner with venture investors in a bid to accelerate the adoption of the technology and expand the offering beyond the embedded semiconductor market.

"What we are really trying to do here is expand the MRAM market and the applications it can go into," Su said. "MRAM is a very new technology [and] Freescale is very focused in the embedded space while MRAM has applications outside the embedded space. This is an attempt to expand MRAM outside of the embedded market."

By: DocMemory
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