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SRAM Challenges and MRAM Achievements

Notes from SureCore and Imec

eejournal.com, Jul. 29, 2019 – 

Today we bring two stories about memory. One is business-model oriented; the other is about technology. We'll take those two in order.

Competing with Free

What do you do when a product that you sell suddenly becomes available for free elsewhere? Of course, we've seen this in a number of contexts (RIP Netscape), but in this case, we're talking about SRAM. Good SRAM is critical to a good design ("good" being suitably vague), so it definitely has value. Problem is, foundries now have proprietary versions in their libraries that their customers can use without buying separate SRAM IP.

So, if you're a small company selling SRAM IP, how the heck do you compete with that? It's not that SRAM suddenly has no value, but foundries have other sources of income, so they can give this away to attract customers. SRAM IP vendors have no such fallback income to make up for lost SRAM income. So what do you do? Sell only highly differentiated SRAM? Start making something besides SRAM? Give up completely?

The first option is the classic MBA directive: make your SRAM compelling enough that people will pay for it even in the face of free versions that aren't quite so tricked out. But how much are differentiating features worth? We all know from buying cars that, for instance, an option for leather seats is one that many people will forego, thinking, "It's nice to have, but I'm not paying extra for it." Is that what happens to differentiated SRAM?

One company in particular, SureCore, is taking the gamble that, yes, there are customers willing to pay for SRAM features that aren't available in free versions. We looked at SureCore a few years ago, digging into their approach to reducing dynamic power. That's a good thing, but is it enough?

I talked with their CEO at the recent DAC convention, and he went through the larger range of possible customizations available as well as their engagement model. Dynamic power is but one way an SRAM can be differentiated.

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