Weebit Nano’s latest licensing agreement is a significant one for the ReRAM maker, which will see its ReRAM integrated into onsemi’s Treo Analog and Mixed Signal Platform to provide it with embedded NVM.

This is the third licencing agreement for the company and a significant one revenue-wise. Onsemi’s 65-nm Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) manufacturing facility in East Fishkill, N.Y., is shipping many different parts, but that one piece that is missing there is an NVM. TSMC was the first manufacturer to offer the ability to integrate NVM into their BCD process, and that trend has grown among vendors, foundries and IDMs. Weebit Nano already has a similar deal with DB HiTek, a global top 10 foundry.

The licensing agreement is significant for Weebit Nano because onsemi’s 65-nm platform is aimed mostly at industrial and automotive applications, the latter of which has tough certifications and environmental demands, as well as a high number of cycles before the memory fails.

ReRAM is not the only NVM that can handle the extremes of automotive, but alternatives like MRAM only make sense at more advanced process nodes. The materials, equipment and tools necessary do not make it economically feasible for anything like what onsemi is doing at 65 nm. The other alternative is embedded flash, but it is a front-end technology, making it a riskier, more expensive endeavor. As a back-end technology, ReRAM is completely separated from any analog parts on the front end, which simplifies integration and makes it low risk, making it the best option for BCD.

Power consumption is also a critical characteristic, with ReRAM coming in much lower than embedded flash—only 3 V for programming compared to 12 V for flash.

The Treo platform is the culmination of a multi-year effort, launched at electronica 2024. It integrates bipolar, CMOS and DMOS transistors on a single chip, supporting voltages from 1 V to 90 V and temperatures up to 175 degrees Celsius.

The platform has a modular, SoC-like architecture and includes numerous IP building blocks that make up the compute, power management, sensing and communications subsystems built on the 65-nm process node.

Treo also supports the industry’s widest voltage range on a leading node, and simplifies system designs, reduces costs and boosts performance for automotive, industrial and medical applications, as well as AI data centers.

Read the full EE Times article.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.