Ramtron granted with US patent for it's Ferroelectric RAM

Ramtron, the inventor of FRAM, a non volatile semiconductor memory technology, is now issued with U.S. Patent No. 7,672,151 entitled Method for Reading Non-volatile Ferroelectric Capacitor Memory Cell

F-RAM is an alternative to flash memory in high-reliable embedded systems where high rewrite cycles are involved. Atmel is delivering low capacity (compared to flash) F-RAM chips and micrcontrollers based integrated with F-RAM. Atmel got richer now by getting the patents granted for this key technology.

"We are very pleased to have secured 17-years of fundamental protection for our one-transistor/one-capacitor (1T/1C) F-RAM memory cell," said Bill Staunton, Ramtron's CEO. "We are currently evaluating what impact this recent expansion of our intellectual property portfolio will have on others that are using devices that may infringe on the claims in this patent."

The new patent covers methods of reading and restoring a 1T/1C F-RAM memory cell. The patent claims fundamental technology for the basic reading and restoring of a 1T/1C F-RAM memory cell including a word line, bit line, a drive line, an access transistor and a ferroelectric capacitor having two different polarization states.