MRAM hits flash arrays in M.2 module

MRAM is poised for a 50 percent CAGR, according to a report released by research firm Coughlin Associates in 2014.

Everspin Technologies Inc. built its business on MRAM through industrial and automotive applications, but has always been looking at broader uses, including for its ST-MRAM, particularly for those requiring data persistence and integrity, low latency, and security.

Now, the company's MRAM has found its way into the M.2 form factor as part of Aupera Technologies' All Flash Array. The AupM001 is an M.2 MRAM module designed with Everspin's EMD3D064M ST-MRAM. Its initial capacity is 32MB, with higher versions becoming available soon, said Everspin president and CEO Phill LoPresti in a telephone interview with EE Times. "We feel this is right in the sweet spot we targeted the products for when we started development."

Aupera's All Flash Array is also equipped with a PCIe backhaul interface.

LoPresti said this is the first time the M.2 form factor has been used to house MRAM.

To date, the M.2 standard has been used for either SATA or PCIe SSDs, having replaced mSATA. LoPresti said the smaller form factor likewise means smaller connections and is appealing to companies building storage arrays.

MRAM is used as a buffer for write caches rather than DRAM, and is becoming an additional tier of persistent, high-performance memory. It can also be adopted as buffer memory instead of low-density DRAM or as I/O and network cache instead of an NV-DRAM.

To read the full article, please go to EETimes.

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