July 11, 2006 – Freescale Semiconductor says it has ramped to volume production of its 4Mbit magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) devices, claiming to be the first vendor to deliver MRAM’s promises of memory that’s faster than flash, unlimited rewrite capabilities, and data storage requiring no power.

The 3.3V “MR2A16A” devices, built at Freescale’s 200mm fab in Chandler, AZ, using 0.18-micron process technologies, are asynchronous memory organized as 256K words x 16 bits, offering 35nsec read and write cycle times.

“This is the most significant memory introduction in this decade,” said Will Strauss, an analyst with research firm Forward Concepts, quoted by the Associated Press.

MRAM uses magnetic materials combined with conventional silicon circuitry (vs. electrical charges in most memory technology) to deliver the speed of SRAM with the nonvolatility of flash in a single, high-endurance device. Target applications include a replacement to battery-backed SRAM units, cache buffers, and configuration storage memories.