RRAM applications

In March 2016 Crossbar announced its strategic partnership with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) to co-develop and produce RRAM technologies. In January 2017 Crossbar announced that it started sampling RRAM chips.

In an interesting interview with Electronic Design, Crossbar's Vice President of Strategic Marketing & Business Development, Sylvain Dubois, discloses that Crossbar has started to ramp up production, and has signed a dozen agreements to license its technology to MCU/SoC companies. Crossbar's current developments are targeting embedded ReRAM IPs integrated in MCUs/SoCs for IoT, consumer electronics, artificial intelligence, and industrial applications.

Western Digital announced that its 3D RRAM development is "finished" (this developed started by SanDisk, which is now owned by WD). WD's current plan is to release memory products based on 3D RRAM in 12-24 months - in the same fab that produces flash (NAND) memory.

Western Digital will at first aim to use RRAM in "specialized" SCM memory devices, but the plan is to scale up RRAM to eventually (2020?) become a "Universal Memory".

In October 2015 SanDisk announced a partnership with HP to co-develop RRAM technologies, enhance SanDisk's RRAM tech with HP's memristor technologies. Eventually, SanDisk will provide its RRAM memory tech to HP that will embed it in its products.

According to SanDisk's enterprise storage manager and senior VP, John Scaramuzzo, SanDisk expects the first RRAM chips to appear in enterprise storage products in 2018. The company expects RRAM to "revolutionize" storage storage architectures once it gets productized.

Adesto Technologies introduced a new CBRAM (a type of RRAM memory) chip family, called the Moneta. These are ultra-low power memory solutions, designed to reduce overall system energy use in connected devices.

Moneta chips perform read and write operations at 50-100x lower power than competitive solutions. The company is now shipping samples in four densities: 32Kbit, 64Kbit, 128Kbit, and 256Kbit.