Crocus Nanoelectronica, a joint venture between Russia’s Rusnano and France’s Crocus Technology, has launched the first stage of its Russian-based magnetoresistive random access memory production (MRAM), Rusnano announced last week.
The project, which follows agreements reached in 2011, is the world’s first site to manufacture MRAM according to 90-nanometer design rule, Rusnano claims.
Initially Rusnano and its French partner had considered locating the factory in Kaliningrad, using the facilities of satellite TV system maker General Satellite. However, they finally chose to manufacture the chips in the “Moskva” technopolis in Moscow.
By the end of next year, the factory is expected to be operating with a capacity of 500 wafers a week. Rusnano contributed half of the €200 million financing for the project.
Magnetoresistive random access memory is a next generation memory that demonstrates improved nonvolatile properties, an increased speed of recording and reading and a virtually unlimited number of rerecording cycles.
The future products of the Russo-French project, based on MRAM and a proprietary technology called Magnetic Logic Unit, which Crocus Technology has developed in collaboration with IBM, could be used in smart cards, network switching systems, biometric identification devices, near-field communications (NFC) based communicators and in secure memory.
Among the shareholders of Crocus Technology is Ventech, a fund based in Paris and Beijing, which has invested in several Russian startups over the past few years.
