China SMIC and Crossbar in Strategic Partnership Agreement

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China’s largest and most advanced semiconductor foundry and one of the world’s largest foundries, and Crossbar, Inc., in RRAM (Resistive Random Access Memory) technology, jointly announced that they had signed a strategic partnership agreement on non-volatile RRAM development and production.

As part of the partnership, te two companies have signed an agreement to provide RRAM blocks based on SMIC’ 40nm CMOS manufacturing process. This will enable customers to integrate low latency, high performance and low power embedded RRAM memory blocks into MCUs and SoCs, targeting the IoT, wearable and tablet computers, consumer, industrial and automotive electronics markets.

“Crossbar continues to execute on schedule, and is now entering the licensing phase. We are honored to announce the collaboration with SMIC as a major stepping stone towards the commercialization of our RRAM technology,” said George Minassian, CEO and co-founder, Crossbar. “Designers of highly integrated MCUs and SoCs need non-volatile memory technologies that are easy to integrate into their products and can be manufactured using standard CMOS logic processes. Crossbar RRAM technology and SMIC manufacturing expertise are creating a new era of unique memory architectures with tighter security, lower power consumption while providing more capacity and fast access time.”

RRAM’s CMOS compatibility and scalability to small process geometries enables the integration of non-volatile memory blocks at the same process nodes of MCUs and SoCs. RRAM cells are integrated in standard CMOS processes between two metal lines of standard CMOS wafers. This enables integrated solutions with on-chip non-volatile memory, processing cores, analog and RF combined on a single die.

“Based on SMIC’s 40nm process node, we can offer high-capacity and low-power memory technology with unique security features for smartcards and various IoT devices to customers,” said Dr. Tzu-Yin Chiu, CEO and executive director, SMIC. “We’re delighted to have Crossbar as a new partner in our stable and reliable 40nm technology platform. We are able to support global customers with competitive technology and help them shorten time to market. We’ll continue to attach great importance to long-term strategic cooperation with more world-leading companies to better serve the market and achieve win-win situation in the future.“

Crossbar’s RRAM provides a cost-effective integrated memory solution for embedded applications equiring low power, high performance non-volatile code execution and storage.