Though in production for years, FRAM has yet to be adopted widely enough to be cost-competitive with mainstream non-volatile memories. However, embedded in SoCs, there is an opportunity to add value and justify a small price premium, suppliers said.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. said recently that in August it will start producing SoCs with embedded FRAM using a 0.18-micron process. Matsushita, better known for its Panasonic brand of consumer electronics, licensed the FRAM technology from Symetrix Corp., Colorado Springs, Colo.

Fujitsu Ltd. has embedded FRAM since 1999 in smart card ICs, RFID tags, and custom devices, said Tong-Swan Pang, FRAM marketing manager at Fujitsu Microelectronics America Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif.

Even Ramtron International Corp., a steadfast supporter of discrete FRAM, plans to launch a line of embedded FRAM products later this year, enabled by a migration from 0.5- to 0.35-micron process technology.

"What we're beginning to do is integrate into a memory solution system-level components--primarily mixed-signal or specialized digital functions, but not a processor--to make something more application-specific," said Mike Alwais, vice president of FRAM at Ramtron, Colorado Springs.

FRAM offers 180ns write speeds compared to 1 second for flash and 3ms for EEPROM, and unlimited write access, according to Ramtron. Internal write voltage is 5/3.3V for FRAM vs. 12V for flash and 20V for EEPROM.

As an embedded memory, FRAM appears to be more technically feasible than embedded flash, which tends to degrade logic transistor speeds, said Jim Handy, an analyst at Semico Research Corp. in Los Gatos, Calif.

But it's still costly. Ferroelectric materials don't play well with silicon, so chipmakers have been putting platinum in between silicon layers, which is more expensive to manufacture, Handy said.

To reduce cost, Fujitsu makes embedded FRAM in fully depreciated fabs running 0.35- and 0.5-micron processes. The existence of well developed libraries and IP helps cut the risk for customers adopting the technology, Pang said.

Discrete FRAM, used mainly in industrial applications, also is making its way into commercial systems, Alwais said. Promise Technology Inc., Milpitas, Calif., recently announced it will use Ramtron's FM18L08 256Kbit FRAM in a family of standalone RAID storage controllers. The design win is the second in the storage area for Ramtron this year.

By: DocMemory
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