SureCore and Intrinsic collaborate to speed up ReRAM' Time-to-Market
Date: 03/11/2023
Intrinsic and SureCore have formed a collaborative partnership to accelerate the time to market for Intrinsic's innovative Resistive Random-access Memory (ReRAM) technology. Intrinsic's ReRAM is the perfect solution for SoC developers who require an embedded non-volatile storage solution for 22nm and smaller nodes, now that flash is no longer a viable option. This technology offers many compelling advantages, including flash-like density and SRAM access times, making it ideal for a wide range of applications, such as automotive, medical, wearables, AI, edge-AI, and AIoT.
Over the years, embedded flash memory has been the go-to non-volatile solution for microcontrollers. It has enabled the delivery of products with updated firmware through over-the-air downloads, making bug fixes and new features easily accessible. However, as FinFET nodes become more cost-effective, scaling flash beyond 28nm has become a challenge. This has paved the way for new memory technologies to emerge, especially in the automotive market where higher processing power and embedded memory are crucial for increased autonomy.
Developers of advanced microcontrollers face a significant challenge as Flash no longer scales with logic. As it is not practical to build the two technologies on the same chip, This has resulted in vendors being forced to adopt a two-chip solution, which is not ideal from a power perspective. Intrinsic has developed a solution to this problem by providing a non-volatile memory that can be easily integrated with the logic on the same advanced process nodes. This not only reduces power consumption but also eliminates potential data bandwidth bottlenecks and latency caused by using off-chip flash memory.
Intrinsic's technology offers faster data reading and writing speeds, up to 100x and 1000x respectively, compared to existing solutions. Moreover, it is fabricated using standard processing techniques at the back-end-of-line, making it less complex and less expensive than other ReRAM solutions. Its flash-like density and high-temperature resilience make it an attractive option for developers.
Paul Wells, sureCore’s CEO, explained, “Intrinsic has invented a breakthrough memory technology that will enable developers to exploit the density and performance of more advanced nodes and integrate its scalable non-volatile memory solution. We have years of expertise in optimising on-chip memory with our SureFIT Custom SRAM Design Service that has delivered bespoke optimised memory solutions tailored to meet applications needs. This has included both single instances as well as complete compilers.”
“It has been a small step to extend this service to encompass Intrinsic’s ReRAM technology and exploit our design environment to deliver the associated verification and characterisation environments underpinning the value of a compiler. The use of a memory compiler is essential to maximise the commercial potential of a new memory such as ReRAM. We are delighted to be working with a fellow British memory company to help bring their novel memory technology to market. Our unique blend of memory design expertise coupled with our proprietary tool suite enable a fast track to a successful product.”
Mark Dickinson, Intrinsic’s CEO, added, “Underpinning the sureCore sureFIT service is a suite of powerful tools that will enable us to save many years of development effort had we had to create similar solutions from scratch. In addition, sureCore’s tools and techniques have been silicon-proven and have been optimised over many years to deliver memories with the lowest possible power consumption and highest density. We are delighted to be able to bring these benefits to bear in the development of our ReRAM products. Both microcontrollers and evolving AI architectures using Intrinsic ReRAM will deliver higher performance at lower power envelopes than those realised using off-chip flash.”
For more information visit:www.intrinsicsemi.com
