LONDON – Genusion Ltd., a fabless Japanese memory IP company, has announced that is has licensed its B4-flash non-volatile memory technology to Rohm Group and Rohm subsidiary Lapis Semiconductor Co. Ltd.
Genusion (Amagasaki, Japan), founded in 2002, has been working on the high-endurance, high-reliability memory for several years.
The B4-Flash technology is described as being both high-speed and high-reliability. Write and erase operations are 5 to 10 times faster tnan NOR flash memory and the memory retains data for 20 years at 125 degrees C after 10,000 erase/write cycles. The company presented a paper on a 90-nm, 512-Mbit NOR-style B4-Flash wirh 8F2 cell size at the 2011 Symposium on VLSI circuits.
The agreement with Rohm is expected to serve as a framework for both companies to develop and manufacture the B4-Flash memory. In addition Lapis will be able to develop and manufacture the B4-Flash memory as one of their commodity memory products.
Prior to the licensing agreement Rohm had been making the B4-Flash memory as a foundry, and started mass production in October 2011.
Rohm intends to use B4-Flash for applications in car navigation and smartphones using it for embedded non-volatile memory in analog products such as power IC and driver IC, and logic products such as SoC in addition to continuing foundry business.
Genusion said that it would work with Rohm and Lapis on further technical development and manufacturing of the B4-Flash memory and related products.
Related links and articles:
www.genusion.co.jp
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