TowerJazz to produce Adesto Technologies CBRAM Memory chips

8 March, 2016

Adesto scales its Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM) from 130nm to 45nm, to gain more performance and intelligence needed for the emerging IoT market

Adesto scales its Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM) from 130nm to 45nm, to gain more performance and intelligence needed for the emerging IoT market 

Adesto's conductive bridging RAM chip
Adesto’s conductive bridging RAM chip

Adesto Technologies from Sunnyvale, California, signed an agreement with TPSCo to manufacture its 45 nm CBRAM memory chips. Today, Adesto manufactures its CBRAM products using a 130nm process at Altis Semiconductor. The addition of 45nm node option for CBRAM will allow Adesto to manufacture devices with more logic and intelligence, including support for standard foundry IP.

Conductive Bridging Random Access Memory (CBRAM) technology is a type of Resistive RAM technology and considered a potential rival to the common Floating Gate based Non Volatile Memories, because in addition to its low cost of integration into a standard CMOS process, it delivers low power and high performance operation.

“Adesto’s commercially available CBRAM products today already operate at lower voltage, write more than 50x faster and consume 5x less energy as compared to standard non-volatile memories,” said Ishai Naveh, vice president of Marketing at Adesto.

“We believe emerging IoT, mobile and energy-harvesting applications demand a new paradigm for performance and ultra-low energy use.” The company estimates that at 45nm, CBRAM devices are at least 20x smaller than standard Flash devices.

Intel behind

The production of the new devices will be done at TPSCo, a Joint Venture 51% owned by Israel based Tower Semiconductors Ltd. And 49% owned by the Panasonic Cooperation. “The agreement is a major milestone for Adesto and resistive RAM technology,” said Narbeh Derhacobian, chief executive officer of Adesto.

“Adding 45nm production is an important step forward to unlocking the full advantages of CBRAM technology and will enable development of new families of products and expanded market opportunities. We’re eager to work with TPSCo’s comprehensive range of foundry solutions to help us ramp our next-generation CBRAM products.”

Guy Eristoff, chief executive officer of TPSCo. said that Adesto address the needs of the growing IoT market. “Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015, and will reach 20.8 billion by 2020.”

The companies anticipate an approximate two-year ramp to bring up CBRAM technology in its new fab.

Adesto is a relatively small company with annual 43.26$ million sales, but  in February 2016 Intel made a 5.1% investment in Adesto, signifying its interest in the company’s technology.

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