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Everspin
Technologies is the global leader in developing and manufacturing standalone and
embedded magnetic-based memory (MRAM) and integrated magnetic sensors. A growing
number of leading corporations in the computing, storage, industrial and office
automation markets have adopted Everspin MRAM to enable their most advanced
products. www.everspin.com
SSD application notes for
ST-MRAM
the
upside and downside of hold-up caps in MIL flash SSDs
editor's
comments:- Everspin operates in the non flash part of the non volatile memory market
and recently entered the
PCIe SSD market.
In
Q4 2017 made its
first appearance in the Top
SSD Companies (11 year tracker series) followed up by readers of
StorageSearch.com.
Everspin Technologies - mentions in
SSD market
history
In April 2010 -
Everspin Technologies
announced
it is sampling a 16Mb MRAM
In August 2013 -
Everspin Technologies
announced
it has closed a Series B financing, raising $15 million to accelerate growth
in the enterprise storage market. Investors in the round included New Venture
Partners, Sigma Partners, Lux Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Epic
Ventures.
In August 2014 -
Everspin Technologies
announced a design win for its ST-MRAM in enterprise PCIe SSD class products
being designed by Mangstor.
In
January 2015
- Western Digital was
among the investors in $29 million series B funding for
Everspin.
In
August 2015
- Aupera launched the
world's first M.2 SSD which
used Everspin's MRAM (instead of flash) as the
nvm.
In
September 2016
- Everspin filed for
an IPO.
In March 2017 -
Everspin began
sampling an NVMe PCIe SSD based on its ST-MRAM. |
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| Soft-Error
Mitigation for PCM and STT-RAM |
Editor:- February 21, 2017 - There's a vast body
of knowledge about data integrity issues in
nand flash memories. The
underlying problems
and fixes have been one of the underpinnings of
SSD controller design.
But what about newer emerging nvms such as PCM and STT-RAM?
You
know that memories are real when you can read hard data about what goes wrong -
because physics detests a perfect storage device.
A new paper -
a Survey of Soft-Error
Mitigation Techniques for Non-Volatile Memories (pdf) - by Sparsh Mittal,
Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of
Technology Hyderabad - describes the nature of soft error problems in
these new memory types and shows why system level architectures will be needed
to make them usable. Among other things:-
- scrubbing in MLC PCM would be required in almost every cycle to keep the
error rate at an acceptable level
- read disturbance errors are expected to become the most severe bottleneck
in STT-RAM scaling and performance
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He concludes:- "Given the energy
inefficiency of conventional memories and the reliability issues of NVMs, it is
likely that future systems will use a hybrid memory design to bring the best of
NVMs and conventional memories together. For example, in an SRAM-STT-RAM hybrid
cache, read-intensive blocks can be migrated to SRAM to avoid RDEs in STT-RAM,
and DRAM can be used as cache to reduce write operations to PCM memory for
avoiding WDEs.
"However, since conventional memories also have
reliability issues, practical realization and adoption of these hybrid memory
designs are expected to be as challenging as those of NVM-based memory designs.
Overcoming these challenges will require concerted efforts from both academia
and industry."
...read the article (pdf)
Editor's
comments:- Reading this paper left me with the confidence that I was in
good hands with Sparsh Mittal's identification of the important things which
need to be known.
If you need to know more he's running a one day
workshop on
Advanced Memory System
Architecture March 4, 2017.
See also:- an earlier paper by Sparsh
Mittal - data
compression techniques in caches and main memory | | |
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| Everspin zaps supercaps in
IBM's FlashSystem |
Editor:- August 9, 2018 -
Everspin -
which reported $10.8 million revenue in the quarter ended June 30, 2018 - has
revealed some interesting
developments of its MRAM technology .
- Everspin's MRAM is the new nvm which
IBM hinted it was using in
its recent blogs about the new FlashSystem 9100
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| MRAM's fitness for high
altitude and hot environments discussed in a blog by Everspin |
Editor:- February 22, 2017 - A new blog -
MRAM
earns its stripes in HiRel applications - by Duncan Bennett, Product
Marketing Manager at Everspin
lists some of the intrinsic characteristics of MRAM and their advantages for
roles in aerospace applications. Among other things Duncan Bennett says:-
- "MRAM memory bits are immune to the effects of alpha particles."
- "MRAM outperforms other non-volatile memory technology when it comes
to data retention at high temperatures."
...read
the article
Editor's comments:- this article only talks
about the virtues of MRAM but another recent paper which I
mentioned
recently in SSD news - a
Survey of Soft-Error Mitigation Techniques for Non-Volatile Memories (pdf)
- raised doubts about the simplicity of using MRAM due to its soft error
sensitivity to read disturb errors.
Admittedly this was looking
at an enterprise memory context where the more memory you have the sooner you
are likely to witness such errors. But it's just my way of reminding you that
there are no magic products in the memory ecosystem.
To be fair
Everspin's article also mentioned that some mission critical customers use
screening processes to select "hardened" MRAM - because - just as
with traditional memories - some devices are just better than others. | | |
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| Everspin files for IPO |
Editor:- September 9, 2016 - Everspin Technologies
has filed for an IPO.
Among other things in the
form
S-1 the company said - "Our 5 largest end customers together
accounted for 34% of our total revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2016,
but none of these customers individually accounted for more than 10% of our
total revenue during the period." | | |
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"We are still the only company shipping any kind of MRAM product... We
have shipped over 50 million units. ... our new silicon on 40nm is a 256Mb chip."Phillip LoPresti,
CEO - Everspin
Inside
The MRAM (September 2015) |
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| world's
first M.2 MRAM SSD |
Editor:- August 13, 2015 - Everspin Technologies
and Aupera Technologies
today announced the
launch of the worlds first all MRAM storage module in the
M.2 form factor.
The AupM001 is
equipped with Everspin's non-volatile, high endurance, 64 Mb DDR3 ST-MRAM
devices and a PCIe backhaul interface. AupM001's capacity is 32MB and among
other uses is used in Aupera's all Flash Array system for parity check and as
a hardware accelerated engine for specific applications that require low latency
and high performance.
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| Everspin
quadruples MRAM chip R/W |
Editor:- February 26, 2013 -
Everspin Technologies
today announced
it will sample the first of a new family of MRAM chips in Q2.
The
MR10Q010 (1Mb in a 16 pin SOIC) has a quad SPI serial interface instead of the
single line interface offered in earlier MRAM devices.
This makes it
more attractive for applications which need the simplicity of no wear-out
non volatile memory and
fast write performance in low capacity and small footprint applications. | | |
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