300% Growth of MRAM Shipments in 2011 for Everspin

Everspin Technologies, Inc. is reporting growth for 2011 with MRAM product shipments to exceed three times the unit volume shipped in 2010.

Servicing more than 300 active customers with 100-plus MRAM products in three major markets, the company is tracking well over 100 applications that are using MRAM today. In 2011 alone, the company secured 250 new design wins for its MRAM product offering. In addition to its discrete MRAM products, Everspin began shipments of embedded MRAM products in 2011 with an initial volume of more than 2M units.

"MRAM has gained acceptance as a superior alternative to non-volatile SRAM for RAID controllers, allowing Everspin to capitalize on its unique position as a high-volume MRAM supplier," said Jim Handy, analyst with Objective Analysis. "The company’s impressive progress this past year is proof of OEMs’ increased interest and readiness to use MRAM in diverse applications."

Building on Everspin’s traction in the industrial, energy and automotive and transportation markets, the major contributor to Everspin’s growth in 2011 was the enterprise storage, server and networking segment accounting for a significant portion of the product shipments. A number of vendors in this segment, including Dell Corp. and LSI Corporation, have turned to MRAM technology in RAID systems, servers and routers, which require reliable, enduring fast non-volatile memories to capture meta-data that must be preserved reliably in the eventof a power failure.

MRAM enhances data center and networking fault recovery to reduce system downtime and also simplifies system design providing an overall lower TCO. Compared to alternative non-volatile RAM solutions, MRAM eliminates the need for external components such as resistors, capacitors, batteries or super-capacitors including additional power fail logic circuitry.

Today Dell is using MRAM as a journal memory in its RAID storage solutions including Dell PowerEdge servers and PowerVault DAS, as well as Dell EqualLogic SAN arrays.

"Everspin helps Dell provide its enterprise customers with flexibility and peace of mind when deploying Dell RAID storage solutions," said Lewie Newcomb, executive director of Dell storage engineering. "With the assistance of MRAM, Dell delivers the reliability, performance and endurance our customers require to get the most from their storage investments."

Everspin MRAM is used as journal memory on LSI RAID controller cards featuring 6Gb/s and 12Gb/s SAS storage connectivity. MRAM chips are also included on LSI reference designs for third party RAID cards and RAID-on-Motherboard (ROMB) solutions.

"LSI is focused on adding the most advanced technologies to our enterprise storage offerings to provide customers with highly reliable and cost-effective RAID solutions that minimize datacenter down time," said Kelly Bryant, vice president of marketing, RAID Storage Division, LSI. "Everspin’s MRAM solutions provide the reliability, fast access and enterprise endurance our customers have come to expect from LSI’s market-leading data protection solutions."

"We are especially pleased that Dell and LSI have selected MRAM for their RAID storage solutions, which is an application where our MRAM provides the optimal non-volatile RAM solution for meta-data storage," said Phill LoPresti, president and CEO of Everspin Technologies. "Going forward we see our next-generation Spin-Torque MRAM products providing solutions for non-volatile buffers and caching applications as well as delivering a new nanosecond-class, gigabyte-per-second non-volatile storage tier."