Crocus Technology, founded in 2006, is a leading provider of secure
microcontrollers for the mobile and security industry. The company develops
Magnetic Logic Unit, a CMOS based rugged magnetic technology capable of offering
advanced embedded security. Crocus' MLUs read and write faster than Flash memory
and have a smaller footprint. This enables Crocus' MLUs to offer significant
advantages in performance, security and cost-effectiveness, making them ideal
for use in smartcards and other embedded memory products. It has offices in
Santa Clara, US, Grenoble and Gardanne, France. For more information, please
visit: http://www.crocus-technology.com
Editor's comments:- November 2012 - just as modern flash
memory needs controllers
to facilitate the development of useful products, so too do other non volatile
memories.
Crocus ia a leading pioneer of MRAM enabling controller
technologies - which nowadays it prefers to refer to as Magnetic Logic Units.
These bundle MRAM memory and controller technologies into IP and chips which
can easily be assimilated and adapted into designs as secure, low capacity
nvm alternatives to flash
- which can operate at high temperatures (e.g., >200° C) and don't
suffer from write
endurance limitations. |
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Crocus mentions in
SSD market
history
Crocus's 2008 whitepaper -
the
Emergence of Practical MRAM (pdf) - gives the best explanation I've seen of
why, despite so many companies entering the MRAM market, so few useful products
have actually come out. It describes flaws in the basic technology which lead to
data corruption (similar in concept to read-disturb errors in flash - although
completely different physically). It's necessary to fix these problems to enable
relaible data storage. The paper describes the proposed solution and also
compares MRAM's data density to other semiconductor memory technologies,
including SRAM, DRAM and flash.
In June 2009 - semiconductor
foundry
Tower Semiconductor, announced it had
taken an equity position (value approx $1.25 million) in Crocus, and announced
it was porting Crocus's MRAM to its 200mm wafer fab.
In May 2011
- Crocus announced
it has closed a funding agreement worth $300 million to create an MRAM
facility in Russia, capable of manufacturing at 90nm and 65nm lithographies.
In November 2012 -
Crocus Technology
announced
that in January 2013 it will sample high speed 1.2MB MRAM SIMs and small
secure MRAM controllers - or what the company prefers to call - "Magnetic
Logic Units" - which are aimed at the
NFC-enabled
smartphones market.
In April 2013 -
Crocus Technology
announced it has
been awarded a contract from IARPA
to develop an 8-bit per cell memory based on its Magnetic Logic Unit
technology. |
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If you're interested in Crocus you may also be interested in some of
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Data Integrity
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Efficiency as a
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Sanitization Methods for
Cleaning Up Hard Disk Drives |
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| Crocus gets funding for x8
multibit magnetic semiconductor memory |
Editor:- April 8, 2013 - Crocus Technology today
announced it has
been awarded a contract from IARPA
to develop an 8-bit per cell memory based on its Magnetic Logic Unit
technology.
This will greatly reduce the energy consumed per
written-bit compared to any other memory technology, including DRAM, Flash,
SRAM and MRAM.
Douglas
Lee, VP, product development at Crocus compared the 8 bits per cell
which the company thinks it can get from its MLU technology with the
state-of-the-art in nand flash - which is 3-4 bits per cell and also compared
to alternative magnetic semiconductor technologies like MRAM - which is
still only 1 bit per cell storage (SLC).
Editor's comments:-
here's some context.
If it were possible to do x8 MLC flash - then
Samsung's
model
840 SSD would have 16TB capacity instead of the 512GB which it has using
x3 (TLC) - which is the state of the art bits per cell shipping in a
regular 2.5" SSD.
But don't get too excited by this comparison as
x8 flash
currently exists only in the realm of science fiction.
Having
multibit capability in a magnetic semiconductor cell will undoubtedly be a
breakthrough for that type of non volatile technology. But the density of such
x8 MLU memories would still be 100x smaller than today's flash. The good
news is that unlike flash - MLU will operate at very hot ambient temperatures -
past 200 degrees C.
See also:-
military SSDs,
10 years of other
storage media which failed to kill flash | | |
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