10/4 Arm announced the spin-out of Cerfe Labs to develop and license new types of non-volatile memories based on correlated electron materials (CeRAM) and ferroelectric transistors (FeFETs). Arm CeRAM researchers will join Cerfe Labs | 加納技術経営研究所

Arm spins-out Cerfe Labs to advance development of CeRAM memory technology News Highlights: • Arm to transfer full CeRAM IP portfolio and related patents to a new spin-out from the company, Cerfe Labs, headquartered in Austin, Texas, and take a minority ownership stake in the new company • Arm VP of Research, Eric Hennenhoefer will serve as CEO and Arm Fellow, Greg Yeric will serve as CTO Cambridge, UK and Austin, Texas, October 2, 2020 – Today Arm announced the spin-out of Cerfe Labs to develop and license new types of non-volatile memories based on correlated electron materials (CeRAM) and ferroelectric transistors (FeFETs). Arm CeRAM researchers will join Cerfe Labs and assume ownership of the Arm joint development project with Symetrix Corporation. As part of the spin-out, Arm will transfer its full CeRAM IP portfolio of more than 150 patent families to Cerfe Labs that will be the foundation for a roadmap of related CeRAM technologies. Cerfe Labs initial focus will be on producing meaningful prototypes which will be licensed to partners with a goal of accelerating timing of enabling these novel non-volatile materials for systems. “Over the last five years the Arm Research team has made great progress on advancing CeRAM technology,” said Simon Segars, chief executive officer, Arm. “As Arm strengthens focus on its core semiconductor IP business, we are putting the Cerfe Labs team in a more agile position to be successful in their work to bring this disruptive technology to market.” The new company is headquartered in Austin, Texas and led by Eric Hennenhoefer and Greg Yeric, two long-time leaders from the Arm Research organization. Hennenhoefer will serve as CEO of Cerfe Labs and Yeric will step into the CTO role. Arm has taken a minority ownership position in Cerfe Labs and Arm Chief Strategy Officer Jason Zajac will join the company’s board of directors. “CeRAM is the industry’s most promising non-volatile memory with characteristics not found in any other memory technology today,” said Hennenhoefer. “The Cerfe Labs team is well-positioned to accelerate the work started as part of Arm Research and help CeRAM reach its potential as a low-cost, high-performance solution for improving systems that scale from edge AI to HPC.” Cerfe Labs continues several years of research from Arm and work that was part of DARPA’s ERI FRANC program, where the team identified additional CeRAM materials and investigated uses of its multi-level cell (MLC) capability. The FeFET program builds on Symetrix’s world-leading lineage in ferroelectric memories and is adding newly discovered material and device integrations. About Cerfe Labs Cerfe Labs is an electronics materials and device research company jointly founded in Austin, Texas and San Jose, California. Cerfe Labs is focused on bringing new levels of performance to computing systems through fundamental innovation. Our engineers develop physical prototypes and through an IP business model, we will license them to partners for the purposes of optimization of our materials, processes, and devices. Our fabrication and test facilities are located at our partner lab in Colorado Springs, Co. www.cerfelabs.com. About Arm Arm technology is at the heart of a computing and data revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Our advanced, energy-efficient processor designs have enabled intelligent computing in 180 billion chips and our technologies now securely power products from the sensor to the smartphone and the supercomputer. In combination with our IoT device, connectivity, and data management platform, we are also enabling customers with powerful and actionable business insights that are generating new value from their connected devices and data. Together with 1,000+ technology partners we are at the forefront of designing, securing and managing all areas of compute from the chip to the cloud. Contacts: For Cerfe Labs Greg Yeric greg.yeric@cerfelabs.com For Arm Phil Hughes phil.hughes@arm.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Symetrix joins Cerfe Labs to continue the development of new semiconductor memory technologies

October 1st, 2020: Colorado Springs, USA – Symetrix Corporation announced today that it will join Cerfe Labs, the recently formed ARM spin-out, to continue its joint development of CeRAM nonvolatile memories and other technologies. CeRAM harnesses the quantum phase transition known to exist in carbon-doped transition metal oxide (TMO) materials, a transition that produces a huge change in resistance due to a voltage and current induced shift in the occupancy of electron orbitals surrounding each metal ion. Other TMO-based resistive memories being developed elsewhere rely upon the formation and rupture of conductive filaments in the memory element, a mechanism that has proven difficult to reliably control at advanced geometries. CeRAM exhibits robust storage from high temperatures (400C) TO lower temperatures (< 2K) due to robust nonvolatile storage derived from its quantum mechanism and is the first memory to operate in this wide temperature range without degradation. Power consumption is very small with programming voltages at 0.6v and 1.2v and a read voltage below 0.2v (with even lower voltages being demonstrated using a different TMO). Read endurance cycling exceeds One Trillion cycles. CeRAM technology is being prepared through a contract development with IMEC in Belgium for advanced manufacturing on 300mm tooling with process integration compatible with sub-14nm CMOS process nodes.

Symetrix, led by Prof. Carlos Paz de Araujo of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, previously developed and introduced ferroelectric random access (FeRAM) memories that have been successfully commercialized by its licensees. Under the joint development with Cerfe Labs, Symetrix will continue its development of ferroelectric field effect transistors (FeFET) based on novel materials and designs for the memory element. Symetrix will announce with Cerfe Labs an FeFET that anneals at 350C-400C, a requirement for deep technology nodes, and operates under electric fields less that 10% of the current FeFETs under development. The Symetrix/ Cerfe Labs development targets the replacement of discrete NAND flash and embedded SRAM due to its potential for higher densities and speed and lower power.

“CeRAM will usher in an era of quantum devices based on the practical application of the correlated electron phenomenon and reversible phase change,” stated Prof. Araujo. “Further, we have demonstrated a solution to FeFET that overcomes the reported limits to scaling and high temperature processing. Both memory technologies rely the pioneering materials technology and device physics which have been Symetrix’s distinction as a technology supplier for over 34 years.”

“I am excited to continue our partnership with Symetrix, now as a focused start up”, said Greg Yeric, CTO of Cerfe Labs. “Our team began working with Symetrix several years ago while at Arm, where we recognized the fundamental promise of CeRAM to significantly advance memory capabilities across a wide swath of end systems. We look forward to continuing our encouraging progress there, and our collaborations on additional pipeline technologies are equally intriguing.”

Carlos Paz de Araujo