Cypress electron-locking flash memory tech gets mass produced at UMC

Cypress Semiconductor said it has started volume shipments of microcontrollers (MCUs) containing its proprietary 40nm Embedded Charge-Trap (eCT) Flash manufactured at Taiwan-based semiconductor foundry UMC. It was result of a multi-year collaboration between Cypress and UMC in integrating Cypress’s flash technology with UMC’s 40nm Low Power (40LP) logic process. Cypress claims its 40nm eCT Flash comes in a 0.053 μm2 cell size that is approximately 25 percent smaller than the nearest competitor. eCT Flash macro is faster operating at 8 nsec random access and 30 μsec word-programming speed and also meets automotive reliability requirements. “This is an important milestone for eCT technology and a testimony to the successful partnership between Cypress and UMC; at the current run rate, we will have shipped more than seven million MCUs containing eCT Flash by the end of this year,” said Sam Geha, senior vice president of the Memory Products Division at Cypress. “We set out to deliver an embedded Flash technology with the industry’s smallest cell size. Leveraging our memory expertise and UMC’s process expertise, we were able to fulfill that objective while minimizing mask adders and preserving logic device models. We also integrated automotive-grade reliability and performance, making eCT a key enabler of Cypress’s new generation of Traveo-branded automotive MCU products.” “U...