Intrinsic scales RRAM to 50nm

Intrinsic claims that, at 50nm, the technology demonstrates ‘excellent switching behaviour’.

“We are delighted to have hit this critical milestone, confirming our theoretical analysis that the devices can be made with nanoscale dimensions,” says CEO Mark Dickinson, “ this means, at last, there will be a simple and low-cost way to integrate non-volatile memory in any chip.”

Using Intrinsic’s technology, any chip designer will be able to embed a non-volatile memory that is as fast to read as SRAM but at a fraction of the cost and power consumption.

These patented “memristor” devices (a type of resistor with memory), which are manufactured on 300mm silicon wafers using industry standard CMOS materials and processes, will enable a new era of embedded, non-volatile memory.

This has applications across the board, from enabling cheaper and more efficient microcontroller units to artificial neural networks.

“Our mission is to make a fast and low-cost, embedded, non-volatile memory available to any chip architect who wants to use it,” adds Dickinson, “in particular, applications such as Edge AI or IoT, where low power consumption and high performance are key, can move from using an expensive and power-hungry external memory to a fully integrated single-chip architecture.”

“Intrinsic is on track to offer a new, embedded, non-volatile memory that is compatible with the most advanced semiconductor process nodes – an option that doesn’t exist today,” says Graphcore CEO Nigel Toon.