Ramtron International Corp and Ulvac Japan Ltd have teamed up to develop manufacturing equipment for the production of Ferreoeletric Random Access Memory (FRAM). The two firms will develop etching and rapid thermal processing (RTP) for the next generation of FRAM chips, which will be built on the o.25 micron process equipment. The firms started cooperating on FRAM production line equipment in the spring of 1997, but are now working together to establish an industrial standard for equipment to produce FRAM chips in volume. Fujitsu Ltd and Ramtron signed a two year deal to jointly develop FRAM memory chips using a 0.35 micron process in March (CI No 3,625). Volume production is scheduled to start in the second half of this year.
Take-up of FRAM chip is expected to increase because the technology combines the access speed of dynamic RAM and synchronous RAM, with the non-volatility of ROM. Because of its high speed, it is replacing electrically erasable programmable ROM in many devices.
