Cypress parts with magnetic RAM stockNews from ElectronicNews OnlineCypress Semiconductor has sold some of its shares in NVE in order to finance continued work on magnetic RAM (MRAM), which is taking longer to develop than anticipated, the company said.
In April of last year Cypress and NVE, a Minnesota-based developer of spintronics technology used in the creation of MRAM, signed a technology exchange agreement. As part of the deal, Cypress also agreed to supply wafers to NVE and invested $6.2m in the company in exchange for about 3.4 million shares of common stock.
Cypress has now sold 686,849 NVE shares, netting about $23.4m on the transaction, the company said. Cypress will continue to honour its partnership with NVE, including sharing MRAM intellectual property and supplying NVE with MRAM foundry wafers. Cypress also intends to maintain its NVE board seat.
"Cypress MRAM development is taking slightly longer than expected, and the profit from the NVE investment will be used for continuing MRAM development and other research and development," said T.J. Rodgers, Cypress president and CEO. Cypress intends to sample a working MRAM within the next year, Rodgers added.
Spintronics is a technique used to create and lock in memory values on integrated circuits with magnetic spin, the advantage being that data is maintained when the power is shut off. MRAM is one of several potential successors to flash memory that the industry is currently investigating.
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