Leading battery and power management, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), industrial edge computing solutions provider Dialog Semiconductor and the world's leading special process semiconductor foundry GLOBALFOUNDRIES united on October 20, 2020 Announced that it has reached an agreement for Dialog to license the conductive bridge RAM (CBRAM) technology to GF.

This resistive RAM (ReRAM)-based technology was pioneered by Adesto Technologies, which was acquired by Dialog Semiconductor in 2020. GF will first provide Dialog's CBRAM as an embedded non-volatile memory (NVM) option on its 22FDX platform, and plans to expand this technology to other platforms in the future.

Dialog's unique and production-proven CBRAM technology is a low-power NVM solution designed for a series of applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G connectivity, and artificial intelligence (AI). Low power consumption, high read/write speed, lower manufacturing costs, and tolerance to harsh environments make CBRAM particularly suitable for consumer, medical, and specific industrial and automotive applications. In addition, CBRAM technology provides cost-effective embedded NVM for the advanced technology nodes required by products in these markets.

Mark Tyndall, senior vice president of corporate development and general manager of the industrial mixed signal business unit of Dialog Semiconductor, said: "CBRAM is one of Adesto's outstanding iconic storage technologies. The addition of this technology to the Dialog product portfolio is of great strategic significance. GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ licensing cooperation just proves the speed at which Dialog and Adesto can develop business after the integration. Looking forward to the future, I am very confident in our strong cooperative relationship with GF. This licensing agreement not only provides the industry with the most advanced technology, but also It provides an opportunity for Dialog to adopt advanced CBRAM technology in the next-generation system-on-chip (SoC)."

Mike Hogan, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Automotive, Industrial and Multimarket Business Unit of GF, said: "Our cooperation with Dialog demonstrates GF's commitment to increase investment in areas that provide customers with further differentiation and value-added. Dialog's ReRAM technology is a very good complement to our leading eNVM solution series. The memory solution combined with our FDX platform will help our customers to further break through the technological boundaries and provide a new generation of secure IoT and edge AI applications."

Dialog's CBRAM technology overcomes the common integration and reliability challenges of ReRAM, providing reliable and low-cost embedded memory, while retaining the low-voltage operating capability of ReRAM. This means that read and write operations with lower power consumption than standard embedded flash memory can be achieved.

CBRAM will be available to GF customers with an embedded NVM option on the 22FDX platform in 2022. Through IP customization, customers can modify the CBRAM cell to optimize its SoC design, improve security, or adjust the cell to suit new applications. In addition, CBRAM, as a "back-end process" technology, can be integrated into other technology nodes relatively easily.