October 31, 2013 RUSNANO Portfolio Company Crocus Nano Electronics
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PRESS-RELEASE October 31, 2013 RUSNANO Portfolio Company Crocus Nano Electronics Launches First Production Line Open Innovations, an international forum devoted to emerging technologies and international collaboration, was the backdrop today for launching production of magnetoresistive random-access memory, or MRAM. The company that commissioned the factory line, Crocus Nano Electronics, is a joint venture between RUSNANO and Crocus Technology SA (France). Taking part in opening ceremonies by satellite link up were Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, RUSNANO CEO Anatoly Chubais, Crocus Technology VP for Worldwide Operations Jean-Luc Sentis, and Crocus Nano Electronics General Director Boris Omarov. Magnetoresistive random access memory, or MRAM, combines energy independence with rapid writing/reading speed and a virtually unlimited number of rewrite cycles. It is new generation memory. Crocus Nano Electronics will manufacture products based on Crocus Technology’s Magnetic Logic Unit™ (MLU), a disruptive CMOS-based rugged magnetic technology it is developing with IBM. MLU offers important advantages in high speed, security, and robust performance at lower cost for its broadening portfolio of embedded products and non-volatile memory blocks. The technology may be used in smart cards, network commutators, biometric authenticating devices, near field communications, and secure memory. The market for product applications manufactured by the portfolio company is forecasted to exceed $8 billion in 2014. The manufacturing facility for the company was built at TECHNOPOLIS Moscow in one of the partnership between RUSNANO and the Government of Moscow. The government is developing a new center for innovative high-tech industry on the site of the former Moskvich automobile factory. Crocus Nano Electronics is the first resident of the future microelectronic cluster. This first production line was completed just one year after construction began. It will produce the world’s first MRAM with 90-nanometer process technology. At the plant, 200-millimeter and 300-millimeter CMOS foundry wafers will be coated with additional layers to create memory cells. By the end of 2014, the plant will have capacity to turn out 500 wafers per week. Total investment in the project was more than 200 million euros of which RUSNANO cofinanced 100 million euros. Technical information MRAM (magnetoresistive random access memory) is a digital memory technology that unites the advantages of traditional semiconductor and magnetic 2 technologies DRAM, SRAM, and Flash while avoiding many of their drawbacks. With MRAM, information is written not with electrical charges but with magnetic polarization of memory elements. That change provides a key characteristic for this type of memory—energy independence, the ability to retain what has been written even if power is lost. MRAM chips combine the low energy consumption, high speed, and nearly infinite capacity for reading-writing cycles of DRAM with the energy self-reliance of Flash Miniature MRAM chips owe their beginnings to the 1988 discovery of the effect of giant magnetoresistance for which, in 2007, Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. In the mid-1990s several companies simultaneously began intensive MRAM development. Motorola was one, and in 2005 it introduced the first chip. The chip’s capacity was one megabit and features size—180 nanometers. Only Crocus Technology, however, has succeeded in creating working 130-nanometers chips and demonstrated the viability of 90-nanometer magnetoresistive memory using thermal switching. Thermally Assisted Switching™ was developed and patented by Crocus Technology for manufacturing advanced MRAMs by heating the memory cells. RUSNANO was founded as an open joint stock company in March 2011, through reorganization of state corporation Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies. RUSNANO's mission is to develop the Russian nanotechnology industry through co-investment in nanotechnology projects with substantial economic potential or social benefit. Its primary areas of investment are optoelectronics and nanoelectronics, mechanical engineering and metalwork, solar energy and energy conservation, medicine and biotechnology, and nanostructured materials. The Government of the Russian Federation owns 100 percent of the shares in RUSNANO. Anatoly Chubais is CEO and chairman of the Executive Board of RUSNANO. Work to establish nanotechnology infrastructure and training for nanotechnology specialists, formerly conducted by the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies, has been entrusted to the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs, a non-commercial fund also established through reorganization of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.rusnano.com. Contact information: 10A Prospekt 60-letia Oktyabrya, Moscow, Russia 117036 Telephone: +7 (495) 988-5677, fax: +7 (495) 988-5399, e-mail: [email protected] .